The Importance of Place

Last week we read Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Through out the essay there is a constant stress on women having a place they can call there own. With-out this "room" women were subjected to constant interruptions and distractions. Woolf discusses the effect these differences had on a woman's writing and the fact that the work of early female authors was not their best. The distractions women faced caused awkward breaks in their writing, which in turn suppressed their ideas. With this idea in mind, an expert from "The Yellow Wallpaper" reminded me of Woolf's emphasis on place.

The narrator in this story lived in a world dominated by the males in her life. Her husband and brother not only diagnosed her condition, but diagnosed her treatment and feelings as well. It was clear from the very beginning that the narrator had no control over any aspect of her life. Her choice of room was chosen by a man, much like the room choice of the authors Woolf mentioned in her essay. Instead of the room "downstairs that opened on the piazza," the narrator of Gilman's story was placed in an "atrocious nursery."

By no means was the nursery a room of her own. Not only did she not choose it for herself, but the constant supervision prevented her from writing, the one activity she stated helps with her depression. The wallpaper itself was a distraction that disrupted the flow of the narrators writing. There was a moment when she is describing the country "full of great elms and velvet meadows" before abruptly changing her focus toward the pattern of the wallpaper. The wallpaper posed as a interruption that Woolf would have stated hindered this woman's writing. The narrator by no means had a room of her own. The oppression she faced by the men in her life, not only prevented her from writing, but were the cause of her insanity. Without any form of expression the narrator found herself trapped in a room that ultimately unraveled her sanity.