Editor's Choice
Does the unnamed main character in "The Yellow Wallpaper" symbolize the status of women in the 19th century?
Quick answer:
The unnamed main character in "The Yellow Wallpaper" symbolizes the status of 19th-century women by representing their invisibility and lack of identity. Her anonymity suggests she is a symbol for all women experiencing similar oppression, as her family fails to recognize her individuality. The story reflects societal constraints on women, with the character's descent into madness paralleling the struggle for autonomy. Her transformation into the "creeping woman" also highlights women's desire for liberation from restrictive roles.
One could actually argue that the main character is, indeed, named in the story. Her husband's name is John; Jennie seems to be either John's or the narrator's sister, as the narrator refers to her as "sister" in the text; and Mary is the name of the baby's nanny. In the end of the story, the narrator appears to believe that she is now the woman who has come out of the wallpaper, the woman she believes has been trapped behind the top layer and scratching to get out. She mentions all the creeping women she sees when she looks out the window, asking,
I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
This lets us know that she no longer thinks of herself as herself but as this other, fictional woman that she has imagined. When her husband, John, finally gets into the room and sees his wife "creeping" on the floor, she says to him,
I've got out at last . . . in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!
No one in the story has ever mentioned a person named "Jane" before, and given that the narrator no longer recognizes her identity as her own, it stands to reason that Jane may actually be her name. In addition, John faints right after this, and it makes sense that he would be shocked by her statement talking about herself in the third person.
I agree with the above post. Leaving the narrator unnamed is not a flaw, and writers will use this technique to suggest that the character is representative of a larger population. In addition, the narrator remains virtually "unseen" by the members of her family, so her being unnamed represents this invisibility as well.
Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an interesting read. One thing to consider is that Perkins herself suffered from what we now know to be “post partum depression.” Failing to name the main character is not a flaw, and while we can’t really know why she did it, we could speculate. One possible reason could be that by denying the main character a name, she is representative of every woman who has gone through this type of situation. Failing to name her could be representative also of her brother’s, husband’s, and caregiver’s failure to recognize her as a real person.
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