Important guidelines

Monique C. Schuster (Judith Pike) Department of English, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD 21801

Many Gilman critics, particularly Treichler, Shumaker, and Fetterley have come to the consensus that the physical wallpaper of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) is representative of the narrator, and femininity. While a more recent critic, Hume, briefly recognizes the phallic symbolism within the paper, she does not elaborate any further on how this pattern contributes to the paper being a form of masculinity rather than femininity. I propose that the wallpaper, in fact, is not "a metaphor for women's discourse," (Treichler 63) or femininity, but rather symbolizes the dominating male force that encompasses the narrator within the house. Moreover, critics of Hume have ignored the smell emanating from the yellow wallpaper. The paper projects itself on the narrator not only by color, but also smell, spreading throughout her clothes, her hair, and even the house. At first it is described as "awful," but eventually she becomes accustomed to it, as she is to become accustomed to the male dominance within her culture at the time. While being held prisoner in this male created edifice she closely examines the paper, finding that it is full of contradictions (just like her husband), and that its pattern is revealing "new shoots on the fungus," a masculinity that is spreading at the fast rate of a contagious sickness. She becomes angry at John's and Jennie's apparent interests in the paper because it represents their alignment with the masculine text, something she so desperately tries to defy. The climactic ending, in which she rips the paper from the wall, represents her attempt to rid herself of the masculine force that surrounds her. She can remove the wallpaper, but the smell lingers, foreshadowing that this defeat is only temporary. Not only will the smell continue, but John will awaken from his fainting spell, and her son (begot of her) will eventually become a man.