Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849

Psychoanalytic Reading of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on

"Hysteria Symptoms and "Rest Cure

Many works throughout history have tackled the issues of women in different
societies mainly focusing on how women are treated in patriarchal societies and how
this oppression reflects on their behavior and action. The short story “The Yellow
Wallpaper” written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that shows
how a woman is caged in a room by her husband and goes into madness mainly
because of the society around her as it is a patriarchal society that pressures women.
The short story could be analyzed from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis theory and
point of view of Hysteria and defense mechanisms caused by the human’s
unconscious mind. This analysis views how the woman is pressured by the patriarchal
society as her voice isn’t heard and had no identity apart from her domestic sphere
and husband. Therefore, she was repressed causing her unconscious mind to form
symptoms that resonate with Hysteria symptoms, causing her to act weirdly and
hallucinate as defense mechanism to this pressure. The analysis of the short story
views how the complex psychological world of the human psyche intersects with the
repressed feminist world and how they both affect each other greatly. It also shows
the conflict between her social role and her repressed desires for autonomy—an
interpretive move supported by a rich body of scholarship (Gangwani 30; Nawaz et al.
2) women of that time period wanted to have an identity but society forbid this type of
. .thinking and acting as well

In depth analysis of the psychoanalytic theory composed by Freud, it is shown how

the human mind is complex and has many different segments that affect each other
greatly. Freud's main focus was on the three different parts of the human mind, the id,
ego and superego. He described that the id is mainly responsible for the human desire
and tries to fulfil it. The superego however acts upon the morals and the right thing
that should be done. The Ego in return acts as a mediator between both the id and the
superego, it tries to fulfill the human desires in an appropriate form (Freud 22). Freud
also mentioned the different ways in which the human mind protects itself from
different types of stress and trauma which he named defense mechanisms. One of the
defense mechanisms he mentioned is repression in which the conscious awareness of
a human removes and excludes any thoughts that cause stress or are unwanted by the
society, thus creating a splitting episode in which a person would develop neurotic
symptoms in different ways (Freud 155) . Splitting episodes are developed as a way
of defense for the mind to keep the human alive and able to function instead of
breaking down and collapsing completely. Splitting episodes resonate with Hysteria
symptoms in which a person could hallucinate for times but become sane for some
..time. This is all due to the effect of stress and oppression a person faces
Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849

Freud was the first person to ever consider and discuss the idea of hysteria which is
present in women (Freud 48). He discussed that the treatment for it was what he
called “rest cure” in which women were advised to stay away from any stimuli or any
energy. This was used wrongly by the patriarchal society against women in that time
period. Where women were accused of hysteria and caged under the idea of treatment
and protection. The society oppressed women, women minds started to repress those
emotions that later turned them to want to break free and have separate identities; to
stop that, men accused women to be mentally unstable and Hysteric. Thus, they were
put under the "rest cure" treatment where they were prisoned. Upon being prisoned
for some time, they started going crazy and hallucinating this is a result of the conflict
between what their inner self and unconscious mind wants and has kept repressed for
years and the social norms that tells them they are not allowed to think and have an
identity. Examining it closely and further analyzing it, Freud’s idea of hysteria
reflected the repressed ideas and emotions that were kept hidden away from the
.conscious mind that suddenly became conscious (Freud 50)

Gilman’s story is about a woman undergoing what was called the “rest cure,” a
treatment used at the time that forced women to stay inactive and avoid expressing
themselves. The story is written in a way that shows the woman’s hidden and
repressed feelings, even though she is not openly allowed to show them. This story
acts like a psychoanalytic tool, revealing the woman’s inner thoughts and struggles.
Even though the woman’s husband tries to control her and deny her individuality, the
story shows her resistance to that control. As for that era women were not allowed to
have a voice, yet the protagonist kept hidden writings of her own ideas. Her feelings
and unconscious thoughts come through the narration, which gives the reader an
insight into her mind. As the scholar Gangwani (77) explains, the woman’s inner life
becomes a way to express her repressed thoughts in defiance of the male-dominated
society controlling her. This idea is similar to what Freud described: when people
cannot express unconscious feelings directly, these feelings come out in disguised or
symbolic ways, called “symptoms this is shown in the way she started hallucinating
and imagining a woman figure escaping the bar pattern on the yelllow wallpaper on
the wall reflects and illustrates how her inner self and identity is trapped by all the
.".social norms and gender roles put by society to control women

The way the story is told reveals the conflict inside the woman’s mind. One part of
her (called the “ego”) tries to be logical and make sense of things. Another part (the
“superego”) repeats the strict and critical commands of her husband John, who
dismisses her feelings. For example, the protagonist was not allowed to walk around
alone and was treated as a baby although she is grown woman. At the same time,
another part (the “id”) is driven by strong, unconscious urges and desires, which show
up in her growing obsession with the wallpaper in the room where she is confined.
This obsession is not simply a result of boredom or madness as she was prisoned in
the house's nursery which reflects upon the fact that her husband calls her "little girl"
and chose to cage her in the nursery. In psychoanalytic terms, it represents the way
Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849

her forbidden feelings and creative energy get displaced onto the wallpaper itself. The
wallpaper becomes both something she hates and something she is strangely
fascinated by — a symbol of her trapped emotions. Thus, she imagined a womanly
figure on the wallpaper and she started to rip the wallpaper in hope to free her own
self. The structure of the story, with its fragmented, increasingly erratic narration,
reflects the way her mind is torn between these competing psychological forces The
fragmentation reflects the protagonist's own fragmented ideas and emotions.
Moreover, the shift of style and tones in the story gives the reader the same illusion
and feeling of the confusion and unstable state of mind of the protagonist. Moreover
this reflects how her mind is in conflict between being sane and being affected by this
. ,.trauma and having Hysteria

In a book written by Gilman “Why I Wrote” (655), Gilman describes her own
traumatic experience with “rest cure” and how it limited her creativity and the
hysteria symptoms she reflected were nothing but repressed emotions just like the
protagonist of her short story. Looking from a Freudian perspective, the rest cure is an
exercise used shut down creativity and control women. This was stated by the
protagonist as she said: “John is a physician, and perhaps… that is one reason I do not
get well faster” (Gilman 647). This proves Freud’s point as well as the idea and
statement by Hafiz Imran Nawaz and his colleagues as they stated that having women
forced into domestic prison is what causes them this distress. Her husband is a doctor
which gives him power as a doctor to treat her and the authority of his as her husband
to enforce this "rest cure" treatment and prison her. Therefore, she knew that her
husband holds a lot of power, and this slows down her treatment and her wellbeing in
this domestic abuse and domestic sphere. As shown in the protagonist’s psyche when
she is left caged in a room "nursery" with a yellow wallpaper this wallpaper is the
border between her repressed unconscious and her conscious mind (Nawaz et al. 3).
Her obsession with the wallpaper reflects her repressed desire and silenced voice
which resonate with Freud’s words when he mentioned “hysterical symptoms are the
direct offspring of repression" (176) This obsession shows her refusal, rejection and
rebellion of this domestic abuse; therefore, she imagined a woman escaping and she
. .ripped the wallpaper

As Freud established, the theory of the “return of the repressed” in which the
repressed emotions and ideas surface to the conscious mind in different ways. This
theory is present in the short story in the way the protagonist became obsessed with
the yellow wallpaper that was what confides her is now her sense of freedom from her
repressed ideas and silenced voice she imagines different things on that yellow
wallpaper and is obsessing over the pattern she says: “It is the strangest yellow, that
wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones
like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman 648). This clearly states how
the patriarchal power of her husband has caused her all that distress over the years
causing her to deteriorate in that matter. In an article written by Zara Kayani (8) the
woman in the short story uses the yellow wallpaper as projection to her long lost ideas
Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849

and creativity which project the state women lived through at that time in a patriarchal
society in which they lacked a voice and being recognized as individuals The yellow
color represents decay and caution in color theory . In this story it also represents and
..symbolizes disgust and psychological deterioration

As the short story progresses the reader sees how the protagonist’s ego is no longer
able to balance the desires of the id to be seen and recognized and the superego which
comprehends that this act is against the society norms thus the ego bursts and “erupts”
as Freud describes this dilemma (Freud 340). Moreover, the house that supposed to be
a familiar place for the protagonist as she is fully aware of this room she is prisoned
in, it turns her into a mad woman, thus all the boundaries start blurring between the
known and the unknown, the sane and mad, reality and hallucinations. “I pulled and
she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that
paper” (Gilman 658), this shows the inner conflict between her id and superego that
resulted in her madness and unstable mind and Hysteria symptoms, panic attacks,
severe anxiety, hallucination, excessive emotionality, irrational fears and
uncontrollable physical symptoms to surface in that manner as a result of her
.repression

One very important part of the story is that the ending is not clear and can be
understood in different ways. On one side, when the main character climbs over her
husband who has fainted, many people usually think that shows she has lost touch
with reality or gone mad. But on the other side, this action can also be seen as
something quite different. It could be viewed as a strange kind of freedom, a moment
when the part of her that has been pushed down and hidden finally breaks free in a
rebellious way—like she is crawling out from behind the wallpaper, which
symbolically traps her. This act shows the hope of all women to break free from all
that control and she has finally (got out at last), but this is all just hope. Neha
Gangwani points out that when the narrator gives in to these deep, hidden feelings
inside her (called the repressed id) and behaves in a strange, unsettling way, it not
only shows that her mind is breaking down completely but also shows how she is
silently fighting back against the male-dominated society that expects her to be quiet
.and obedient (Gangwani 32)

This kind of contradiction is something Sigmund Freud talked about when he wrote
about cases of hysteria. People who suffer from such mental distress sometimes
express their pain in ways that also secretly show resistance and rebellion against the
pressures they face (Freud 89). So, in this way, the story encourages readers to think
about the main character’s so-called “madness” not just as a sign that something is
wrong with her mentally but also as a powerful symbolic act. It is both a sign that she
is struggling with serious mental problems and a desperate way for her to say “no”
and take back some control in a situation where she feels completely oppressed. Even
Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849

though her action may seem tragic, it also shows her trying to stand up for herself in
.the only way she can

Different scholars have had different ideas and interpretations on the psychoanalytic
reading of the text; however, Tabla et al. argued that the short story could be
considered a case study of how society norms and expectations as well as the
patriarchal society that silences women and deprives them from all their rights and
how it affects the women psyche and gets them into the “symptom formation” stated
by Freud which is the formation of hysteria symptoms (Tabla et al. 10). Nawaz et al.
also adds that the protagonist’s case shows how her sickness isn’t of her insane mind
as a woman as society viewed women at the time but as a result of the oppressive
society around them (Nawaz et al. 9). Freud's theory on Hysteria is also gender based
as it reflected the Victorian era women stereotype in which women are biologically
weaker and can not bear stress as men thus, they exercised the “rest cure” on them
(Freud 50). The short story however, tackles the issue and views how women are just
.a result of the insane society and their repression and not their own biological being

By interpreting "The Yellow Wallpaper" using Freud's psychoanalysis, this essay has
followed the lines of a psyche torn between conflicting forces-agency and obedience,
voice and silence, reason and delirium. Gliman's story dramatizes the cost of
intellectual and emotional repression, foregrounding not only its protagonist's pain but
also the resilience and creativity that continue to exist, even in secretive or desperate
forms. The wallpaper, finally, is a metaphor for the unconscious itself: layered,
resistant to interpretation, yet constantly on the verge of breaking through into
consciousness. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written in 1892 by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman is a short story that shows how a woman is caged in a room by her
husband and goes into madness mainly because of the society around her as it is a
patriarchal society that pressures women. Through the psychoanalytical lense and
theory by Freud it is viewed how women were treated at that time and how their
repression led to their repressed ideas and emotions to hysteria symptoms. Those
symptoms were treated by the “rest cure” in which they were prisoned and kept in a
closed room. At that time women went crazy as there was a conflict between their id
and superego which made them hallucinate and go crazy out of their repressed
.thoughts that resurfaced

Works cited
Freud, Sigmund. “The Unconscious.” General Psychological Theory, edited by Philip
.Rieff, Simon & Schuster, 2008, pp. 166–207
Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849

Freud, Sigmund. “The Ego and the Id.” 1923. The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Translated by James Strachey, vol. 19,
.Hogarth Press, 1961, pp. 1–66
Freud, Sigmund. “Creative Writers and Daydreaming.” 1908. The Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9, Hogarth Press, 1959,
.pp. 141–154
Freud, Sigmund. “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through.” 1914. The
.Standard Edition, vol. 12, p. 147–156
Freud, Sigmund. “Repression.” General Psychological Theory, Simon & Schuster,
.2008, pp. 150–165
Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Translated by James Strachey,
.Basic Books, 2010
.Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” 1919. The Standard Edition, vol. 17, pp. 217–256
Freud, Sigmund. “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.” 1905. The Standard
.Edition, vol. 7, 1953, pp. 123–246
Fiqws Portfolio. “Freudian Concepts in The Yellow Wallpaper.” 2020,
rzfiquis10108.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2020/10/05/freudian-concepts-in-the-yellow-
.wallpaper
Gangwani, Neha. “Analysing the Short Story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ of Charlotte
Perkins Gilman with Lens of Psychoanalytic Criticism.” TIJER - International
Research Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 2014, pp. 30–33.
www.tijer.org/tijer/papers/TIJER2312142.pdf
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1892. In The Norton Anthology
of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym et al., 9th ed., vol. C, W.W. Norton,
2017, pp. 648–56
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” The Forerunner,
Oct. 1913, pp. 649–50
Kayani, Zara, et al. “Freudian Analysis of Repression, Madness and Feminine Identity
in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Jahan-e-Tahqeeq, vol. 7, no.
1, 2024, pp. 1–12.
/www.jahan-e-tahqeeq.com/index.php/jahan-e-tahqeeq/article/download/1175/1066
Nawaz, Hafiz Imran, Zara Kayani, and Ms. Farzana. “Freudian Analysis of
Repression, Madness and Feminine Identity in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte
.Perkins Gilman.” Jahan-e-Tahqeeq, vol. 7, no. 1, 2024, pp. 1–12
Tabla, Myette L., Pauline Mae M. Menchavez, Angel Carin Mangubat, Lito L.
Diones. “A Psychoanalytic Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s
The Yellow Wallpaper.” IJMDES, vol. 1, no. 12, Dec. 2022, pp. 3–11.
.journal.ijmdes.com/ijmdes/article/view/97
Name: Seifeldeen Youssef Id:193849