Optical Oppression

Optical Oppression

Women have been trying to fight off oppression and fight for equality between genders for centuries. In the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" the main character undergoes what I call, optical oppression. The subject realizes this and is able to see that she is being treated with unjust principles, which causes her mental distress. The light that shines on her oppressed anger also comes from the window in which she sees her reflection on a daily basis. The window shines light onto the wallpaper and this eventually results in the narrator realizing she is being oppressed. The use of anger, metaphors and similes in the "The Yellow Wallpaper" presents the topic of oppression in a unique way.

The wallpaper in the story begins as something awful to the narrator, she describes the wallpaper in the same way that she would most likely be describing herself: "the color is hideous enough and unreliable enough and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing." However, over the course of the story, the wallpaper becomes her self-identity and personal achievements--mostly through the different kinds of lighting that are mentioned throughout the story. During the daytime, the light seems to keep the narrator composed, "In the daylight [the woman in the wall] is subdued, quiet. ... It keeps me quiet by the hour." The narrator keeps referring to the woman in the wallpaper as a different person from herself, but really, they are both the same person. The narrator is quiet during the day, but as soon as night falls, "any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, [the wallpaper] becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean and the woman behind it is as plain as she can be." The narrator feels imprisoned and lifeless, especially when she is alone at night. The lighting that casts bars on the walls makes her realize that she feels imprisoned and she is being oppressed. She is plain and has not made any significant impact with her life. The narrator keeps referring to the woman that she sees in the wallpaper as a "formless sort of figure." The woman in the wall may be referred to as formless, but it is also the narrator that views herself as formless--formless and plain. The narrator says that when the light is just right, she can see a strange figure in the wallpaper: "This wallpaper has a particularly irritating shade, only seen it in certain lights. In the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so--I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk." This strange figure that she sees in the wallpaper is her own shadow that is being cast onto the wall from the window. The narrator is the one that skulks and the one who is formless. At the end of the story, she realizes this through all of the different optical oppressions.

The common theme of light is again brought up when the narrator says "there are fireworks in my pillow-case." This is one of the brightest lights there is and she keeps it close to her at night. Critic Gregory Johnson refers to "The Yellow Wallpaper" in his work titled, Studies in Short Fiction. He says "in a story focused upon a woman's enforced dependency, it's not surprising that the narrator takes special note of the Fourth of July." The fireworks in the narrator's pillowcase could be literal, or they could also be metaphorical. Fireworks explode with great intensity after being confined in a very small space, just as the narrator "explodes" and takes her stance at no longer being oppressed after being kept in the small bedroom.

The self-identity and personal achievement of the narrator, who Johnson refers to as the "unnamed heroine of "The Yellow Wallpaper," willingly accepts madness over repression, refusing a life of "unhappy, silent acceptance," is discovered by all of the optical forms of oppression that she faces and overcomes. Aside from the optical oppression enhancing the narrator's ability to understand what she is facing, Gilman also displays the theme of anger to uniquely present the topic of oppression. Gilman provides the readers with a unique line to show more character development of the narrator: "I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store." In the end of the story, the wall becomes blank after the narrator rips all of the wallpaper off from it and the narrator also refers to herself as plain, just as the furniture in her childhood. This sense of repression that the readers get from the story helps in understanding the narrator's anger.

The author Susan S. Lanser, who wrote Feminism Criticism of "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the Politics of Color in America, helps shape the setting from what it is in the beginning of the story: "sexual oppression is evident from the start: the phrase "John says" keeps the narrator immobilized and bored literally out of her mind. The wallpaper allows the narrator to "escape" her husband's "sentence" and to achieve the limited freedom of madness which virtually constitutes a kind of sanity in the face of the insanity male dominance." Anger is seen as a reoccurring theme in "The Yellow Wallpaper." The repetitious line "what is one to do" reflects her feeling of helplessness, which is part of the cause of the anger. To help understand the type of anger the narrator is going through, Johnson says "we might view her behavior as an expression of long-suppressed rage: a rage which causes a temporary breakdown." The narrator is said to have a "slight hysterical tendency," which is the first sign of oppression that the readers see. It is footnoted that "Women's emotional problems from anxiety and depression to fatigue and nervousness were described as "hysteria" at this time." When a woman