Moral Consciousness in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a disturbing look into the moral and social position of women at the time the author wrote it in 1899. The narrator slowly goes mad as the story progresses, and it is easy to see why. She is stuck away in the country while her husband is gone all day, and she has nothing to do and no interests to keep her occupied. A nanny is even raising her baby. She cannot visit others and her husband keeps her nearly a recluse because of her "delicate condition." In reality, she is a strong and vital woman who begins hallucinating because her life is so empty and she is so lonely. He has even convinced her she is sick, and then says he does not really believe it.
The female author wrote this story to show how women were treated in Victorian times. This woman wants to work and participate in her life, but the men around her convince her she is better off doing nothing. Her husband is so controlling that he even makes the decision where they will sleep, even after his wife tells him she does not like the yellow wallpaper in the room he chooses. All of this shows how society looked at women at the time. They were "fragile" and emotionally irrational. They had no power or choice in a relationship, and they were seen as weak and unable to deal with the real world. This narrator may have mental problems, but it seems they came from the way she was treated by her husband and society. It was as if women did not exist. They could not work, many did not even care for their own children, and they had little to live for or strive for. Gilman wrote this story to raise the moral consciousness of readers, and to show the plight of women in Victorian times. The reader has to feel sorry for this narrator - not because she goes mad, but because she was driven to madness by the social and moral beliefs at the time. There is little social justice here, because the husband will just believe he was right, and his wife was crazy. He will not see his own participation in the situation, or how he could rectify it by treating his wife as an equal.
