The Yellow Wallpaper

"I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions" (Gilman, 488-89).

This was one of my favorite quotes because it really made me think and it's beautifully written. After reading this I began to wonder if the wallpaper could stand for anything else because the way Gliman describes it sometimes seems like it could be about something besides wallpaper. I looked into this and found a couple of critics who made a suggestion that I thought was interesting. Karen Ford and Paula Treichler speak of the yellow wallpaper as a possible metaphor for male discourse or writing. Ford asserts that, "The wallpaper, in fact, sometimes appears like male discourse in its capacity to contradict and immobilize the women who are trapped within it" (Ford, 311). In this sense, the wallpaper, which confuses and deteriorates Jane's mental stability, represents the way John, and men at the time, treated women with these conditions. Men dominated language and told the women what was best for them, often times leading them to further mental illness. Both John and Weir Mitchell are examples of this in the way they seclude their patients, make them take all kinds of strange antidotes, and insist that they will get better this way. Jane is never given a chance to seriously speak to John because he treats her like a child and takes nothing she says seriously. John dominates her and traps her in the same way the wallpaper does. In this sense, the wallpaper mirrors the male dominance because of its suffocating and demanding nature.