Examining Oppression Through the Lives and Stories of Sylvia Plath and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The storyteller begins to spend her days tearing at the paper, pulling yard after yard of the ugly paper from the walls in an effort to free the woman and herself. She becomes so totally engrossed in this activity that she no longer desires any company from her husband, or her nurse. In fact, she would rather be left alone completely so that she can concentrate on the task at hand, which is to rip the paper from the walls, figuratively ripping the bars from her prison. We can see an increase in her madness at this point, and her diary entries become more and more erratic as she feels she is gaining momentum in releasing her doppelganger. After another morning of stripping the paper from the walls she writes “I don‘t like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did” (Gilman 41). She begins to feel sorry for the women she sees creeping about the garden, and finds that she now enjoys the safety of her solitary confinement. Instead of having to creep along outside on the ground, she feels she can enjoy creeping in her own room with the smooth floors. And, if she doesn‘t leave the room – then she does not have to worry about getting lost.

In the final moments of her diary she writes that she has thrown away the key to the room, succumbing completely to her imprisonment. She no longer has any desire to fight the forces that brought her here, and instead has altered her mind so that she can survive her new life, hidden from the rest of the world. Though her madness has been apparent for the reader for quite some time, it is only when John finds her creeping crazily throughout the room, that his eyes are opened for the first time to what she has become. The realization is such a shock, that he faints - leaving her in complete astonishment that a strong man, like John, could faint.

The many critics that have written about The Yellow Wallpaper and The Bell Jar have given a vast array of material to complete this research paper. Their insights into the reasons for the mental decline of the female protagonists in these stories have lent credence to the thesis that oppression is a key cause in the problems these women faced. Oppression of any kind to anyone is never healthy, but it was particularly detrimental to women with creative inclinations such as the two women in these stories. Women in particular have felt the push and pull of finding an identity either based on a career, or on having a family. Both Gilman and Plath suffered through the very same identity crises that they described in the characters they created. Gilman was a feminist who believed in women’s rights, and she believed “women  have been limited to a savage-like state when confined to the home” (Deutscher 2 ). Gilman felt that it was crucial to a woman‘s emotional well being to have her own interests, and not be a slave to the domestic lifestyle. She felt that “home life makes men more selfish and women more degraded and self-abnegating. It physically weakens women‘s bodies and minds” (Deutsher 2). This viewpoint is seen clearly through Gilman‘s narrator as the reader is invited into her personal thoughts. The narrator loses all self worth and all desire to become part of the normal world after having all stimulation removed at the hands of her husband. John becomes her prison guard, doling out food and affection as he decides.

Sylvia Plath also knew first hand the suffering of being a woman in a patriarchal society. Her personal journals write very much like her novel The Bell Jar, emanating the torment she feels at having been born a woman, and therefore being born with limited choices. A passage in her diary states “I am at odds. I dislike being a girl, because as such I must come to realize that I cannot be a man” (Plath 54). She continues “My only free act is choosing or refusing that mate” (Plath 54). This sentiment is in clear agreement with the character of Esther Greenwood. Esther is not happy with her station in life. She does not want to do what society has molded her to do, which is get married and have kids, so she runs from man to man – exercising the only choice she feels she has – refusing or accepting a mate.

Both Gilman and Plath have done a remarkable job of putting the reader into the mind of the narrators‘ of their stories. We can feel the distress of these women as they muddle through a world that won‘t accept them for who they are, and we can feel their pain as they are forced into the mold they have tried so desperately to reject. Instead of having the freedom to pursue their dreams, as they felt that all men were entitled to, they instead had to hide in their own minds, creating a safer world in which no one could ever hurt them again. This was their descent into madness at the hands of the oppressive societies in which they lived.

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