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The Yellow Wallpaper presents a unique format that can be interpreted in many ways. Gilman adds purpose to her writing by bringing awareness to overlooked topics and issues. One way the author does this is through her descriptive writing style. The Yellow Wallpaper seamlessly depicts the concepts of the Id, Ego, and Lacanian psychosis.
The narrator’s constant focus on writing and the yellow wallpaper portrays the exposure and taking over of her ID. It is evident that there is a disturbance “in the unconscious of the narrator. The id has been ruthlessly repressed; still, it is trying to” become noticed (Gul 2). The narrator is experiencing “some ripples in her unconscious in which she is afraid to openly confront. Due to this she wants to write about it and feels good when she does so. However, when this emotional and intellectual source of venting is denied she mentally deteriorates quickly. Throughout the story, she says “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me” (Gilman 846). The narrator’s wish to write and be able to freely express her emotions shows her desire to satisfy her basic needs.
Through John’s restrictive control over the narrator, she is forced to internally retaliate and hide what she believes will truly help her. The narrator is bound by the repressive gender roles and oppression (superego), but cannot do anything about it, she retaliates where she can through her psyche's repressed feelings/irritation. She is fighting an internal battle and repressing her id,” the superego is what is morally required of her to please her husband and nurse her baby, but some aspect of her Id stops her from doing so. It is because of this tug of war between the id, ego, and superego that she is inert.”(Gul 2). She is tormented by the never-ending struggle of maintaining balance; becoming unstable she starts seeing a pattern in the wallpaper of her room. Her obsession with these patterns reveals that she is becoming more consumed by her repressed emotions. Finally feeling as though she escaped what helped her captive, the narrator shouts: “ 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!” (Gilman 855). Using her name in the third person shows her subconscious resentment towards her roles as wife and mother. The narrator is experiencing a constant struggle between understanding herself and feeling free in an environment so controlled. As a result of this, she dissociates from her roles as mother, wife, and patient and in a sense loses her identity to escape what she felt held her captive.
The Lacanian theory elucidates to the narrator’s attempt to constitute herself through the yellow wallpaper and her journal. Her crawling around the entire room on all fours “testifies to the fact that she is now a case of psychoses. “Wallpaper” according to a critic, Hume, represents her “repressed other or suppressed self”. It is the desire that haunts her socially confirming herself. The desire for an uncanny and forbidden self; the unreadable and lawless” (Gul 3). Her severed disconnection with reality and how she showed that the constant restraints and isolation led to her instability. The narrator’s inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality in the context of self-constitution portrays the effect of the “mirror stage”. She is reverting back to her mirror stage by reverting back to an infant-like state. She is constantly exploring the nature of reality – tactile and visual stimulation hence her obsession with the patterns of the wallpaper.
By reverting back to the “mirror stage” she is allowing herself to shed her current identity (that of an oppressed woman of mental instability) and enter a stage of I that permits a freer existence. Through the understanding of the Id, ego, and Lacanian psychosis the reader can better understand the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. Though the Yellow Wallpaper is often looked at though in a feminist perspective, it has proved to have a psychoanalytical background as well.
Its character development helped enhance its meaning and vividly describe the character’s mentality throughout treatment. Gilman’s short story will continue to intrigue and touch many readers for centuries to come.
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