Enclosed Women: on the Use of Enclosure Imagery by 19Th-Century Female Authors to Expose Societal Oppression

Enclosed Women: On the Use of Enclosure Imagery by 19th-Century Female Authors to Expose Societal Oppression Hannah Carlson The theme of enclosure is not uncommon by female authors, if only because of the in the literary writings of nineteenth-century significant changes occurring in societies. female authors. Scholars have suggested that Women still fulfilled their traditional roles as it was used as a way to portray the figurative domestic wives and mothers, but early imprisonment these women felt in their own feminist ideals had already begun to surface. lives. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in Female authors such as Jane Austen and their groundbreaking work The Madwoman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived the Attic, comment on the use of ―obsessive chronologically and geographically distant imagery of confinement‖ and how it ―reveals lives, but both included in their work similar the ways in which female artists feel trapped themes of enclosure, indicating that the and sickened both by suffocating alternatives enclosure motif is not merely coincidental. and the culture that created them‖ (64). The This motif can also be seen in works by dominating force of patriarchy and the Elizabeth Stoddard, Charlotte Bronte, Kate societal restrictions of the time prevented Chopin, and many others. Though the means women from being free to fully express their of expressing themes of enclosure are opinions. Instead, women used their talents as different across authors, it is possible to see writers to create scenes in their works that an underlying theme of oppression in all their evoked images of enclosure. works. Women writers felt the need to expose These images are manifested through the the problems in the dominating patriarchal depictions of the female protagonist in a society and did so through the imagery, physically and mentally enclosed space, themes, and diction in their depiction of specifically through descriptions of the home physical, spatial, metaphorical, and mental where she is centrally located. Writing that enclosure. expresses the author‘s feelings can be seen as Works such as ―The Yellow Wallpaper‖ therapeutic for the individual as well as a by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are especially statement about society. It can be argued that interesting to focus on because of the due to the consistent repetition of the theme popularity that they and their authors have of enclosure in its various forms, women achieved both in their own time and in the writers consciously included images of present day. Gilman was born in 1860 in confinement in their works as an accessible Connecticut and wrote ―The Yellow way to express how they felt about the world Wallpaper‖ in 1890. By critically analyzing around them to the general public. This Gilman‘s works, as well as biographical hypothesis is supported by their personal fight information about her, it is possible to for the equality of women in their civic roles. understand the society that she lived in and They were fighting to be heard and regarded her experience of it. Gilman‘s short story has as independent thinkers. It is important to become known for its representation of recognize this phenomenon as it gives a nineteenth-century women‘s feelings of personal and realistic glimpse into an oppression as well as its revelations of important era in women‘s social history. nineteenth-century misunderstandings about The nineteenth century is a significant women‘s health. This work is an example of literary period for examining literature written how literature gives a firsthand and intimate 35 look into the minds of people living through canon included primarily male-authored texts, an historical period: through a better and although John is not an author, he understanding of women‘s history, it is represents these men as he becomes a barrier possible to achieve greater gains in women‘s to the protagonist‘s freedom to write. lives in the present. As a physician, John not only embodies While some earlier female authors were the dominating patriarchal role of the subtle in their depiction of a confined woman husband, he also takes on the role of the within the home, Gilman was more blatant in superior intellectual. The story is told through her portrayal of enclosure themes. She shows secret journal entries by the female her female protagonist‘s descent into a protagonist who can only write in private seemingly state of madness as a direct result because writing has been forbidden by her of physical and emotional confinement. By husband. She suffers from mental enclosure in using such an obvious metaphor, she makes a that she must hide her feelings and desires bold statement with one compact short story, from her husband. Throughout the journal evoking different versions of enclosure entries about the house and her own feelings, throughout. The story begins with the female there are recurrent comments about what John protagonist writing in a journal about the would say to each of her opinions. For house her husband John has rented for the example, she wanted to stay in a room summer. John, a physician, has diagnosed his downstairs, ―[b]ut John would not hear of it‖ wife with a nervous disorder and prescribes so instead they took ―a big, airy room‖ rest and relaxation in solace to cure her. She upstairs, which she does not like (373). The comments on the style of the old house, protagonist‘s constant evocation of her saying that it is ―a colonial mansion, a husband‘s opinion shows that she listens to hereditary estate‖ and would even venture to his advice and assumes that he must be right, call it ―a haunted house,‖ which foreshadows even when her mind tells her something unusual occurrences that happen later on in different. His choice of bedrooms has the story (372). The house and bedroom constrained her into one specific room in the where the protagonist stays is an example of house where the bed is described as being spatial enclosure as it is isolated from other ―nailed down‖ (376). Though at times she people and she is literally enclosed within walks in the gardens outside, for the most part both. The image of the house is an important she stays in bed because he has told her to element for it symbolizes the ownership rest, which represents a type of physical males had over females. ―For not only did a enclosure. Through his power as a man and as nineteenth-century woman writer have to a doctor, he has confined the protagonist into inhabit ancestral mansions (or cottages) an isolated room by herself without allowing owned and built by men, she was also her the freedom to exercise her own choices. constricted and restricted by the Palaces of It is only when she gives herself a purpose Art and Houses of Fiction male writers and starts making her own decisions that she authored‖ (Gilbert and Gubar xi). The begins to show physical signs of narrator of ―The Yellow Wallpaper‖ moved in improvement. She must break away from the consequence to her husband‘s orders to a restrictions of her husband in order to be home that was built by men and which had physically and mentally free. been owned, and was now rented, by a man. As the entries progress, the woman begins A second layer of male ownership of females to describe different elements to the room. is exemplified in this story when John tries to One element in particular is the peculiar restrict his wife from writing. The literary wallpaper that she describes as ―one of those 36 sprawling flamboyant patterns committing imagined woman. every artistic sin‖ (373). She also describes it The elements of light and dark within the as ―repellent, almost revolting‖ and ―horrid‖ imagery of the barred women symbolize how (374). She repeatedly attempts to discuss being in the public view can affect a woman‘s repapering the walls but John disagrees, reactions to enclosure. The narrator describes telling her she ―was letting it get the better of the wallpaper woman by saying that ―by [her], and that nothing was worse for a daylight she is subdued, quiet‖ (379). Later, nervous patient than to give way to such when describing the movements of the fancies‖ (374). The narrator relents, against woman, the protagonist writes that ―in the her better judgment saying, ―I would not be so very bright spots she keeps still, and in the silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a very shady spots she just takes hold of the whim‖ (374). She puts his needs above hers bars and shakes them hard‖ (381). Lightness and gives in even though she knows the paper can be paralleled with the outward appearance bothers her. Before long, she begins to see of a middle-class, nineteenth-century woman, something within the crazy pattern of the while darkness reflects her inward feelings. In yellow wallpaper; she sees ―a strange, the two descriptions above, the woman does provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems not move in the light: she stays in one place, to skulk about behind that silly and within her domestic role, in the house. It is conspicuous front design‖ (376). The figure her inner self in the darkness that is trying to that the protagonist is beginning to discern is break free from the bars of oppression. Later, her own self. On some level, she realizes that the wallpaper woman is seen creeping the person she really is has to ―skulk‖ around outside. This shift from the ‗subdued‘ indoor with the façade of a passive and domestic woman to the ‗creeping‘ outside woman woman. She continues to watch the paper and could be explained by the actions of the follow the designs until the figure becomes ―a protagonist herself.

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