Wright 1 Joyce Wright Dr. Petersheim English L-202 22 April 2018 Jungian Literary Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1939) married artist Charles Stetson and gave birth to their daughter Katharine prior to the story relayed in her literary work, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (Abcarian 1366). Many different forms of literary criticism have been done to understand the story and its author. A Jungian literary archetypal analysis of Gilman’s short story reveals a female protagonist mother archetype and writer by trade who undergoes an archetypal underworld journey involving a traumatic experience that leads her into the depths of her unconscious mind in a deeper search for herself, a dark night of the soul period bearing anguish and depression. A desire to write about her experience results in a transformative story involving broader issues such as entrapment, social isolation and subjection of women, a call for women’s rights, and a look at women’s evolution in modern times. Archetypal characters, symbols, and themes in “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to open a new paradigm for understanding selfdevelopment and actualization for women and men in our contemporary era. A psychoanalytic critic analyzes literary works using psychic models and principles defined by Freud and others (Abcarian 1340). Jungian literary criticism, based on the work of Carl Gustov Jung (1875-1961), a “post-Freudian” psychological theorist (Abcarian 1340), looks for archetypes, or universal symbols, in literature that reflect elements of the individual psyche, the inner workings of men and women characters, and/or the collective unconscious shared by Wright 2 humanity as a whole in order to help bring greater interpretative meaning to the literary work (Jung 4). Many critics, including Adams and Duncan, see Jungian Analysis as gender biased. “Within Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, there does seem a predisposition to the phallic effect of the symbol” (76) and further ruminates that the Jungian theory is male dominant viewing women as “objects of male theorizing” (147). But, a Jungian archetypal analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a classical feminist literary work, explores both old and new paradigms on feminine identity and development. For example, the main plot of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in which the female narrator is isolated away from the outside world by her husband and rests in a room all day mostly by herself and stares at the wall that is covered in yellow wallpaper for long periods of time reveals in Gilman’s work an exploration of female oppressive elements and gender politics. As she watches the wallpaper, she looks for any movement and finally recognizes a shapeless form that exists behind the paper: “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 76-78). Here, a Jungian critic would recognize the formless figure as an archetype, a form or aspect of herself that is hidden from conscious view by Gilman and being projected onto the wall by her unconscious mind. In Jungian theory, there are four major archetypes: shadow, persona, animus, and anima. In analysis, these archetypes are often the pieces of the self which need to be more greatly understood and reintegrated back into the self to arrive at a more balanced, well state of being. In literature, these archetypes are often associated with, or have likeness to, mythological figures that express the essential meaning of the archetype in a symbolic form in the text. Wright 3 Shadow Archetypes In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the female protagonist is unconscious of her animus archetype. Central to the Jungian theory is individuation, a process of self-realization attained by integrating shadow archetypes back to conscious awareness. Without being allowed to have any external expression of any kind, the passive anima aspect overtakes and overwhelms the female protagonist and causes her to fantasize about external activities and to try to find her own life of activity again somewhere in the room at which time she begins to identify with and fantasize about the shadow of a formless figure behind the wallpaper and she stays up at night just to see it creep around the room. In the end of the story, she is possessed by the thought that she can catch the shadow. The image of the shadow behind the wallpaper is the aspect of the self which has been hidden from her awareness for so long during her confinement. Archetypal Journey The dark night of the soul is a term which refers to a total collapse of life in some way after a traumatic experience. The traumatic experience the female protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is undergoing is one of subjection, isolation, and confinement by her husband. The text mirrors an archetypal narrative pattern when it involves the physical journey to a new house and she is confined to a room. Marina Berezhnaya (12) remarks how the symbols of a nailed down bed, barred windows, and shackles on the walls look more like a torture chamber than a children’s nursery. The environment of enforced isolation, like severe deprivation of the soul, causes her to hallucinate, to go through a psychological descent into darkness, experiencing a shadow woman behind the wallpaper. While being confined in her domestic prison, she has some food and shelter needs met; however, as John Rowan’s article, “Self-actualization and individuation,” explains (2015), the need for love and spiritual development, not just shelter, Wright 4 clothing, food, and water, is the need that when fulfilled helps raise one out of spiritual void and darkness into one’s better state of wellbeing known as self-realization, or actualization. She fantasizes, but in every fantasy, she is dreaming of a woman outside herself that is wanting to break free. This is very important. She is projecting her own want and need outside herself until she becomes consciously aware of what is happening to herself and as well to many women in her time period. She recognizes that the role is not true to who she really is, she empowers herself by coming to terms with her own subjugating circumstance. At the very end, she recognizes herself not as the person being confined but as the woman freed from confinement: I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman 260-262). Housewife Archetype According to Joan O’Brien, Hera the Greek Goddess as a housewife archetype has two aspects: the loving and supportive housewife and the warlike argumentative, bad-tempered shrew (105). The two sides of the housewife archetype, the light and the dark, can be seen in Jung’s classifications of the dual archetypes of the persona and shadow. The good wife is the persona archetype comprised of the stereotypical virtues of an ideal wife: obedient, nurturing, and docile. Her opposite is the shadow archetype of the disobedient wife, which can become more powerful and dominant in the personality if some imbalance is not resolved in the marriage. In the case of the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, her sister-in-law embodies the good wife ideal by pleasantly managing the household and taking care of her baby. On the other hand, the narrator embodies the dark wife relinquished to a domestic prison with constraint over her creative Wright 5 capacities (childbirth, writing, physical movement, and social life). In fact, she is not allowed to even see her own child. The female protagonist faces a conflict between a traditional domestic role demanded by her marital arrangement and what she felt was true of herself and the limitations to her personal freedom found by such a domestic role. Husband Archetype The protagonist’s husband is the prototypical "proud man" with a cruel disposition whose household affairs align closely to the French fairytale archetypal character of Bluebeard, a bad husband archetypal figure whose predatory obsession over his wife is excessive. Bluebeard, just like the husband of the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, locks his wife inside a room and never lets her out and she loses all contact with family and friends. No one even knows if she is alive or dead. The horror of the story is that she is actually killed by Bluebeard through social isolation, entrapment, and torture. According to a Jungian analysis of the Bluebeard fairytale by Estés with plot and themes of subjugation of women similar to those found in Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, such a predator is the dark archetype of the masculine who seeks to limit and control his wife’s every movement rather than allowing her to develop and contribute to his life as per her personal nature and strengths. The sister-in-law of the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the Bluebeard helper who assists him in his maneuvers. Wise Woman Archetype Another bad husband archetype is Zeus who swallows his wife in an attempt to stop the birth of a daughter whose intelligence might be greater than his own; but, Athena is born through his brow and is known as a feminine archetype of knowledge and wisdom. The story of Athena is mirrored in the female protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” who continues to write secretively in a journal even though her husband forbids it. Clarrisa Pinkola Estés, a native Wright 6 American Jungian analyst, points out that the wise woman archetype is also found in native mythology as a wild woman who resurrects from her bones after a near-death or underworld experience and finds her freedom by running with wolves beyond the boundaries of traditional feminine role and narrative, freed from the confines of, or encaging by, societal dictate through her own wise ways which include courage, truth-seeking, intuition merged with intellect, and creativity to define her own narrative and path through life. Wise woman archetypes such as the Greek Athena and the native American Wild Woman embody feminine strength instead of female vulnerability and frailty and add to a contemporary paradigm shift anchoring in more natural flow and less resistance in feminine discourse. Estés’s archetype of the wise woman who runs wild with wolves is embodied by Gilman’s female narrator who breaks free of the mental and physical shackles in the end of the story. She takes the key to her bedroom door and throws it down below, symbolizing her being in control of whether or not she is being confined by her husband. She tears off the yellow wallpaper and explains that it felt like to her as another form of confinement such that she had to remove it to feel free. This relates well the freedom she has claimed for herself in spite of the situation she was put through by her husband. Removal of the yellow wallpaper by the narrator at the end of story also symbolizes the removal of societal control over feminine identity. Mother Archetype The journey to the underworld and back by the female protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” mirrors the healing journey from darkness to light in the Greek myth of Demeter. Homero (97) describes the myth of Demeter whose daughter Persephone is missing, taken by abduction to the underworld. Demeter’s mythical connection to nature and its cycles parallels the archetypal death and rebirth of the soul. The housewife protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Wright 7 has her baby taken from her. Both Demeter and the protagonist experience deep sadness and trauma. Demeter’s happiness returns when she is reunited with her child. The female protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” finds hope in the lively scenes of nature seen through her window. Demeter is a symbol of nature and agriculture as well as fertility and motherhood. Analysis of symbols The heavy bed nailed to the floor symbolizes domestic imprisonment rather than marital bliss and a sense of being enslaved or trapped rather than beloved and welcomed in the home. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes patriarchy; by removing it, she is freeing herself from the constraint of societal limitations on women’s rights, identity-formation, and creative expression. The bars on the windows are barring the protagonist from leaving a hostile environment. The garden symbolizes the beauty of life outside the home which gives her hope of escaping. Her writing journal symbolizes her voice and creative expression. The shadow behind the wallpaper represents her animus archetype hidden in the shadow of her unconscious mind, an archetype embodying rationality which her husband is eclipsing by his excessive control and constraints on her movements. His constraints make her passive physically and mentally through his use of force. The color yellow represents happiness, creativity, intellect, and sunshine; inverted, the yellow represents the social illness of capsizing feminine intellectual endeavors. Writing is a symbol of self-expression, freedom, and autonomy. Analysis of Tone The overall tone of the piece is demoralizing. The use of force to control her psyche into submission is brutal, an attempt to make her lose confidence and hope, to weaken and devitalize her so she will have to rely on her husband, her captor, even if it is against her own will. He wants to be in complete control and succeed at undermining her at least until the end of the story Wright 8 when she breaks free and he faints. After he faints, she crawls on all fours over him like an animal who was just let free from its cage and overturning its captor. Conclusion What makes this short story an excellent piece for Jungian archetypal analysis is the fact that there is a shadow behind the wallpaper the narrator keeps trying to catch, a journey of the soul into the depths of the unconscious mind reveals hidden aspects of the self, symbols express human entrapment and captivity, the narrator must integrate herself in order to break free from mental torment, and the healing journey back to wholeness which she pieces together for herself. Wright 9 Works Cited Abcarian, Richard, et al. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Literature: The Human Experience. 12th ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016, p. 1366. ---. “Psychoanalytic Criticism.” Literature: The Human Experience. 12th ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016, pp. 1340-1341. Adams, Tessa and Andrea Duncan. The Feminine Case: Jung, Aesthetics and Creative Process. London, H. Karnac Books Ltd., 2003, https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=_BSHEW vpWcoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=copyright&f=false. 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