Yellow Mellow

Okay, so this isn't the best picture of a dinner ever taken, but bear with me. I'm in a literature program, remember? Tonight's dinner was a cauliflower and kale salad, paired with a soft-boiled egg and a bright lemon butter sauce. There is a of yellow going on here. Perfectly paired with my yellow-saturated story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Last seen on this blog with a chai and Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman offers a more dystopic look at motherhood in her earlier short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper." The acidic salad is a nice touch for this biting story about society's failure to assist postpartum mothers.

I actually taught this story in my short story class last week. My students had no idea what to do with it. They were confused by the ending, they were unsure of the context, and they definitely didnt like all of the yellow. But they had some really insightful things to say about certain aspects of the story. One student wondered whether the narrator had had a miscarriage, and if so, how that might affect her experience of being cooped up in a nursery. Another wondered about other women like CPG.

After class, though, I found myself wondering about one woman in particular: Jennie.

I think about her again tonight as I munch on my salad, thinking about how part of the contemporary postpartum treatment was soft, bland foods. The story makes a brief reference to these sorts of diets, but doesn't spend too much time on it. It's focused on the other ways the treatment forced women into soft, bland environents.

My dinner tonight is bright and warm. The lemon zest brightens the whole dish, and the soft-boild egg might be, well, soft, but it adds a gentle heartiness to the cauliflower and kale. Kale can be so bitter sometimes, you know? But I like it. And I like that I made this all for myself. That I can take care of myself.

The first description we get of Jennie is that she "is a perfect housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!" The narrator cannot take care of herself (supposedly) so Jennie is there to care for her. Jennie is the one in charge of her meals and her activities and her entire life. In some ways, Jennie is her mother.

At first, Jennie seems to be a mere obstacle to the narrator's wrting (what does that say about mothers?). Like John, she seems to embody the (harmful) domestic ideals of the time: she is a woman who embraces her role and expects or desires nothing more. Yet I think there is more to Jennie than just pleasant housekeeping.

The narrator observes Jennie examining the wallpaper with greater frequency. With the narrator's mental health swiftly declining, she interprets this with a paranoid eye. She wonders if Jennie has realized that there is a woman inside of the wallpaper ("But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out by myself!"). Jennie dismisses it with the excuse of further housekeeping; she claims that she is looking at the wallpaper because it is staining all of the narrator and John's clothing. The yellow permeates everything.

On the last day of the house, things come to a head. The day begins with Jennie asking the narrator if she can sleep in the bed with her in John's place. The narrator believes this is a ploy to increase surveillance and denies the request, claiming to prefer to be alone. But the narrator does not actually believe she is alone. The narrator thinks she has foun a community with the woman (women) behind the wallpaper.

But what about the female community outside of the wallpaper? Jennie, who tries to take the place of her husband? Who runs the househld? Who examines the wallpaper?

After the narrator beings to strip the paper off of the wall, Jennie sees her handiwork. Jennie isn't mad that the narrator has destroyed a part of the house or concerned for the narrator's mental health. Instead Jennie laughs. Jennie asserts that she would not mind doing it herself. She then encourages the narrator to leave the room, but the narrator refuses, claiming that Jennie had betrayed herself that time.

Betrayed herself how, though?

I said earlier that Jennie seems to be like her mother. As I am wrapping up my dinner, I realize there is a piece of kale in my teeth. It's needling at me--sort of the way this issue is. I debate calling my sister to tell her how gross I am. She's good for that sort of thing. You can be gross with your sister in a way you can't be gross with anyone else--not even your mother. And I think that's it. The narrator is a mother; she doesn't need a mother. She needs a sister.

While Jennie may play a similar role to John at the begining of the text, she is a greater presence in the story than the absent John. Jennie directs the day-to-day care of the narrator. In many ways, she is simply an extension of John's power over the narrator. But I think Jennie also represents the potential power of a female community, a sisterhood. Jennie's betrayal for the narrator is that she knows the secret of the wallpaper and does nothing. They could tear off the paper together and free the "caged women." She could work with the narrator to assert their own identities and pursue something beyond the domestic sphere. But Jennie doesn't and her refusal to act is a betrayal that severs all potential ties between herself and the narrator. Jennie is John's sister, not the narrator's.

In some ways, you can see how these ideas burgeon into Herland. How should women be support systems for one another? How can they help eachother after childbirth? How can they assist each other through motherhood? In Herland all of the women are sisters. The novel makes clear that their sisterhood is one of the primary reasons for their ability to maintain a utopia. Because they are sisters, there is no competition or bitterness. They work together to ensure the success of all. That sisterhood is what is missing in "Yellow Wallpaper," and missing to the extent that the narrator forms a sisterhood with the shadows in the wall.

It's something to think about: the essential need of a sisterhod for the survival of a motherhood.

I need to put away my leftovers and think about this tomorrow.

#charlotteperkinsgilman #yellowwallpaper #motherhood #sisterhood #angelinthehouse #gendernorms #postpartumdepression