I’ve studied Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” in high school and two college literature courses, and ever time I re-read the story, I discover something new, or I find themes of this short story in other works. We never learn the narrator’s name, which proves how dehumanizing the character feels because of her identity as a woman with mental health issues. Her husband and physician, John, orders bed rest to cure her sickness, which is really postpartum depression. She is separated from her baby and goes mad staying inside one room with a ghastly yellow wall paper. Without any creative freedom, the only thing her imagination can explore is the yellow wallpaper. She eventually loses her mind as a result of the rest cure developed by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and the story’s ambiguous ending leaves the reader to believe whether the narrator is truly free or forever trapped within the wallpaper.
Flash forward more than 100 years since “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in 1892, and Louise Erdrich addresses the same oppression that women face. What’s unique about Erdrich’s tale rests in her identity as a Native American woman. Her main character, Cedar, is also an adopted Native American woman whose story is told through the journey of discovering who her parents are and understanding who she is based on her roots. Understanding women’s oppression through a Native American lens further deepens the roots of intersectionality that impact women through racial and ethnic identities. In both stories we see women separated from their children to benefit patriarchy. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” has no choice in the matter, and I would argue that the separation from her child causes her more distress than staying away from it. While John doesn’t diagnose her with postpartum depression, bed rest isn’t the “cure” she needs. Her desire to write and imagine were fueled by creative passions from within that were begging to escape beyond her physical desire to spend time in the gardens outside her barred windows. In Future Home of the Living God, Cedar is most likely separated from her baby at the end of the story. I find great happiness in her desire to live through hope, predominantly focused on creating a better world for her child, no matter the outcome of the de-evolutionary madness going on in the world. But I predict that Cedar does not live long after the novel’s ending, or continues to serve the government as a baby-making machine, further subjugating her identity to reproductive means. Both stories also subjugate women to mental institutions. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is taken to a summer home, but the reader can gather that she’s staying in a children’s mental asylum. Two problems here: 1. The narrator is a grown, adult woman, staying in a children’s facility. John treats his wife as a child, who must obey strict orders and not wonder beyond the confines of her room. It almost feels like the narrator is on permanent time-out, but what did she do wrong? And 2: A mental asylum is not the ideal place for a woman to be cured of postpartum depression. She is confined to one room, and cannot get any fresh air. She’s not allowed to read or write, and she maintains little to no communication with the outside world, even with John’s visitors. No wonder she goes crazy. In Future Home of the Living God, the government abducts all pregnant women, and even encourages citizens to turn in pregnant women who are hiding their pregnancies. Cedar is eventually taken to a “hospital,” which she recognizes immediately as the Minnesota Correctional Facility underneath the “Stillwater Birthing Center” sign. So for both women, why is the medical industry still pursuing these methods for harboring women they feel who are dangerous to society? It goes to show, despite Future Home of the Living God’s fictional genre, how little progress has been made in terms of women’s reproductive health and rights. For an indigenous woman like Cedar, these complications are heightened by her identity, where the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” may have access to privileges that protect her from government elements that plague Cedar’s narrative. No matter the identity, women in both stories share a collective narrative of oppression as a result of patriarchal influences in medicine and government, and both show how much work we still have to ensure that women have the choice to affordable and reliable health care options that suit all lifestyles, including Native Americans.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorCreative writer + professional & technical writer. TWD enthusiast. Archives
April 2021
Categories |