By looking at “The Yellow Wallpaper” through the male gaze one could think the surface of the story is in respect to a mental illness and a disobedient woman.This is important to the reader because if it was viewed from a Feminist lens one could think about the confined “room” women are always living in with the control and presence of men in the “house”. The story portrays men and women in specific stereotypical gender roles. The narrator of the story agrees and does whatever her husband says, simply because he is filling the role of the man, as she obeys and listens filling the role of the woman.
The author of the story shows many things throughout the journey she takes us on.One of the key factors she proposes is the hegemony of the woman’s husband in the story. John is a doctor and an overbearing husband. Newly married and newly parents the couple is renting an old house for a few months. When the woman in the story becomes seemingly mentally unstable, possibly depressed, John, husband and doctor, poses his solution to the issue. He demands she stay put in a room, not leave and not think about the illness. This only makes things worse as she becomes consumed by the room and almost becomes a part of it. By the end the room has control on John and the woman is free from the room.
This narrative is clearly a metaphor and not just a horror story. If the woman represented all women and the man represented all men with the house being society it becomes clearer. John forces her into a room and obviously has more power than her. Weak and fearful, the woman does as she is told. This could be applied to numerus examples. This could be a man telling a woman to do anything. Through his male gaze he is doing nothing wrong. She is an object and does as she is told. But once it is seen through the lens of the woman’s antihegemonic feminist side, we are opened to the severity of the story. Every woman seems to be put in the same little room. The man makes the rules and that is that. This is a problem. One cannot simply shut someone out and limit them. Women have been put into this room for years with hopes of breaking out. The only time they seem to come out is when they are needed to have children or be married. We also learn subtlety in this story that there is a baby. The woman is not allowed to see the child and this only makes things worse. So now she has been used for marriage, and for childbirth, now she is done, now she can be locked in the room.
Men and women are portrayed as conforming traditional roles in the story. The patriarchal structure shows the male dominate house with the obeying wife. It is shown this way until the end. At the end our narrator breaks free of the constraints of the room. In shock, John faints and is now consumed by the walls of the room. They seem to have switched roles. Even though he is now trapped in the room he still poses an obstacle because she has to step over him every time. This shows a few things, one being that even though they seem to have switched roles he is still present, and two no matter what woman do there will always be a man in the way that they will have to step over to reach the door.
Another possibility for the concept of the room is this notion that the room itself is the woman. And as Rivkin and Ryan asked: is being a “Woman something to be escaped from or into?”(530). So the woman in the story is trying to escape womanhood, weather it is into it or from it she is conflicted. By means of the Male Gaze she is being helped into womanhood by her husband’s “protection” and “cure”. In way of the Feminist lens she needs to escape the room to become more of a woman. She is a mother also, but unable to see her child. So she needs to break free of womanhood to enter motherhood. Because it is impossible for her to be a mother without first being a woman, this poses a conflict.
When the story was first proposed it was a clear story of horror and terror. Years later after it is looked at deeper and from different views, the reader can be opened to a new story, one of control and patriarchy. Though John seems to be doing what he thinks is best, he is actually killing his young wife. He does not know any better for he is simply taking on the role of the man. The woman knows this is not how things should be but simply becomes a prisoner of her husband. By the end she is the one in control, John is trapped in the room and she can move freely about the house. Every woman should be able to move free about the world, but as is seen in the end of the story, even though John has fainted, he still poses an obstacle to the woman. And as for the room, the paper has already been ripped off and damaged. The pain John has caused cannot be fixed. He must now feel what it is like to be trapped in the dreadful room.
