short reading response

Erin Smith’s Response to The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about a woman with an unknown illness. She moves to a summer home with her husband, a physician who believes there is nothing wrong with her, where she is kept in a spacious room without much company besides her husband. She despises the peeling yellow wallpaper in the room, and during an episode she believes there is a woman trapped behind it and tears the rest of it off the wall. At the end of the story, she believes she has become the woman trapped, and her husband faints when he sees her scurrying around the room.

I’ve read this story before in high school and my class took the feminist approach at that time. My first thought after reading this story for this class was how much it reflected the treatment of mentally ill for years, especially women with mental illness. Just like the narrator, their issues were never taken seriously and it was often diagnosed as “female hysteria” which I think we all know is utter nonsense by today’s standards. Even her simple request to take down the wallpaper that bothers her a great deal is denied, her husband insisting that she was “letting it get the better of [her]” (Gilman). Not only that, but she is allowed very little to do while she is “recovering” from her illness. She cannot socialize, cannot write, and seemingly cannot leave the room with the yellow wallpaper. She is like a prisoner in her own home, and arguably the room invokes an image of a mental asylum, with the barred windows being the clearest example.

Being kept away from others only serves to worsen her condition. Humans are social, and we need to interact with more than just the same few people for long periods of time. From experience, you tend to get frustrated easier, like the narrator does with her husband. We also need stimulating activities, and the narrator says she needs it herself, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman). She is not even allowed to write while she’s “recovering,” a basic human activity. Mentally ill people were considered unsightly and kept away from others, which often only worsened their illness like the narrator. It’s not really surprising she begins to hallucinate after who knows how long she’s been in that room, having no real activities to do.

I also couldn’t help but think of current events while reading this short story, especially after seeing a post on social media that said something like, “Whatever you guys do, don’t read The Yellow Wallpaper right now.” I’m sure a lot of people are dealing with new issues during this quarantine (myself included; my mental health has tanked since we moved out of UMW). Cooped up in our own homes, unable to go out and interact with people besides our immediate family, not much to do besides complete school work, watch TV, and/or play some kind of game. “Stir crazy” is what a lot of people are experiencing, although for others there may be hidden issues that they never experienced before because they were stimulated and properly socialized. It may be a reach on my part, but I see a bit of a connection between the story and current events as well as how mentally ill people have been treated in the past.

Word count: 575

I Pledge, Erin Smith

Amys Response to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s’ “The Yellow Wallpaper”

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman follows the narrator through her struggles with mental health that can be characterized as schizophrenia. The narrator is confined to a top floor room and not being allowed to leave shows how her illness wasn’t taken seriously, enhancing that women are seen as weak-minded and unable to control themselves. Mental health in this story suggests that not only is it not taken seriously when related to women, it is also not properly treated; rest can not be the answer to everything that ails women.

The narrator gets “unreasonable angry with John sometimes,” and is sure she “never used to be so sensitive,” thinking it “due to [her] nervous condition,” (Gilman). Her nervous condition being schizophrenia. She hides her emotions from John, seeming as though he does not truly care about whatever is wrong with her, almost ignoring what is going on. The reason for these changes in emotion and lack of are related to schizophrenia, as the narrator, herself has also made this connection.

Seeing faces and women stuck inside of the wallpaper trying to get out, is just one example of a schizophrenic hallucination in this short story. We have another where she sees the same women from the wallpaper creeping outside her window. None of this is said to John, even when he wakes up and she tries to talk to him about her condition after seeing the wallpaper move for the first time, he shuts it down stating how she is getting better. She makes a quick comment about how she is physically getting better before stopping short of what we can assume would mention her mental health declining. Not getting the proper treatment for any illness can have dire consequences, in this case, the narrator continues to become more delusional.

By the narrator herself, we can see how the treatment of those who can be deemed ‘hysteric’ or ‘disturbed’ would be shut away and rarely dealt with even by their own husbands who had more serious cases to tend to during this time. It seems as though no one else is in the house, but the mention of the bars on the window could also lead to the inference of being at an asylum of sorts, even though in the beginning we hear it has not been used for years.

The disability status that comes with mental health, is one that is also denied. We see this here as well when the husband “assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter […] but temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency — what is one to do?” (Gilman). Many, especially women, were undiagnosed and passed off as a case of hysteria. No one fought the doctors to truly find out what was wrong, and all doctors would do this. Along with the three mentioned in this story. Women were the only ones who were not so satisfied with the ‘diagnosis’ they received. The treatment of women in the medical field regarding mental disabilities has been one to put down a diagnosis just to keep them from saying anything further.

Schizophrenia has many different causes and symptoms. Relating all of these events in the story to the narrator having schizophrenia, all play an important role. Hallucinations, seeing women in the walls and also the same one woman outside of her windows, all point to some sort of psychosis. Her unstable emotions certainly play a role and are usually the first sign of any time of mental illness. Schizophrenia specifically makes sense because they are all together within the span of a few months, and her medications, that most likely are not designed for such conditions, are making it worse by treating the wrong illness.

I pledge.

Amy Rouse

Word Count; 624

Tara’s Short Reading Response to Michael Davidson’s “Universal Design”

Michael Davidson’s “Universal Design: The Work of Disability in an Age of Globalization” is a particularly relevant piece regarding current events. Davidson examines the intersectionality between disability and globalization, and in doing so considers how disabled bodies become both part of public spaces, as well as being treated as public spaces. The idea of disability being spatial is fascinating, not least because it removes the, as Davidson points out, often moral associations of being disabled. Disability therefore becomes no longer a fault, but rather an inevitability based on social and geographical positioning.

Globalization is, at its essence, a game of wealth hoarding. The point of businesses developing international influence is effectively never for the sake of altruism, but rather to increase revenue. Davidson describes the “actuarial value” that is placed on disabled people—exemplified by the World Bank, but visible in daily life in a capitalist society—and establishes that in the free market “internationalization of healthcare creates—rather than eliminates—disability” (121-122). Regarding the pandemic-sized elephant in the metaphorical room, Davidson’s writing drives at the fundamental issue with both globalization and the treatment of the disabled community: those who are most at risk will, almost inescapably, will be left to fend for themselves. While a disease does not have to be disabling, people with no support network are the ones who will become disabled, whether that be physically or financially. To tie back in with the previous idea of disabled bodies being treated as public spaces available for use by society, the current pandemic panic reveals the lack of empathy for the disabled by treating the deaths of people with preexisting health conditions (such as respiratory issues, autoimmune disorders, and the simple decline of advanced age) as being inevitable and relatively unconcerning. That is to say that if only the sick and the old die, somehow, they are the sacrifice that society is willing to make. Obviously not everyone in the general public feels this way, but the general apathy that tends to be thrown about in regards to those most at risk is revealing, to say the least.

One criticism that can be made of Davidson’s text is that he lacks what I would consider to be first hand accounts of the issues he’s presenting. Most of the examples he provides are media examples, such as the films of Jibril Diop Membety, the film Kandahar, and the tape cassette “Yiriba”. He mentions the scandal with Bayer and tainted blood, as well as the traveling theaters in Africa that try to teach about the AIDS epidemic, but this lack of personal anecdotes leaves his writing to examine the performative views of disability, rather than the lived experiences of people with disabilities. The lack of first hand perspective, to me, removes some of Davidson’s credibility. Davidson’s view of disability is decidedly formed by the social model, which tends to view disability through a larger lens rather than focusing on the individual; disability is the fault of society, not any single person. While I do not believe that any of the points Davidson was making in terms of how disability relates to globalism, I do think the lack of individual experience outside of media is an oversight. While art often reflects reality, it is not the same thing. Describing the plot of Dirty Pretty Things (2003), while harrowing and pertinent to Davidson’s thesis, is not the personal account of someone who has been through the black-market organ trade. In some ways, Davidson’s lack of first-hand accounts is reminiscent of the removal of disabled voices from disability studies by focusing on stories about disabled people rather than stories told by disabled people.

I Pledge.

Word count: 610

James’ Response to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden

In the first ten chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, I struggled to find exactly where I should be looking to view this text in regards to the disability lens. I was looking for a single point to narrow my focus on, but as I read I soon realized how this text intersects with disability was going to be a little less obvious than I had originally assumed.

To begin, the introduction of Mary Lennox as the main character, calling her the “most disagreeable-looking child ever seen” and saying that “her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another” struck me as some sort of chronic illness, but now I think the terms of her negative physical features stemmed from the neglect she faced from her parents and growing up without learning empathy for others, making her appear ugly on the outside to reflect the harsh prejudices she held internally.

Before the passing of both her parents and the remaining servants at the Lennox’s home in India, Mary does not cry for the loss of Ayah, the nurse who took care of her, but she cries as the house is in a panic due to a cholera outbreak, and she realizes she is forgotten. As it was said in the text, “Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her.”

When Mary is found to be the sole survivor of the Lennox house, she is sent to a home filled with children who tease her for her temperamental nature, calling her “Mistress Mary, quite contrary.” This is the first instance of Mary’s slow but steady realization that she is not the center of the universe, and she reacts immediately with anger. She is then taken away by Mrs. Medlock who is the one to tell her that she will be moving to England to be with her Uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven. The description of Mr. Archibald Craven caught my attention the most, as they mention his physical disability, and then immediately the fact that he was married, implying that usually people with disabilities do not get to find true love, “… an he’d have walked the world over to get her a blade o’ grass she wanted. Nobody thought she’d marry him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she didn’t – she didn’t.”

Upon finding this out, Mary immediately connects the idea of her Uncle with a French fairytale about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess. She learns that Mr. Archibald Craven refuses to come out of the West Wing of his estate following the death of his wife, and also notes it sounds like something out of a book, but did not make her feel cheerful. She does all she can to hide any outward displays of interest, and stays fast to her default setting of apathy towards others.

This attitude stays the same for the first few weeks Mary lives in her Uncle’s estate. She is rude to the servant Martha, who she compares to the servants she lived with in India, and this is one of the starkest examples of Mary’s racism and entitlement. Her rage flies wild and she says “You don’t know anything about natives! They are not people- they’re servants who must salaam to you.”

This is where I’d like to introduce the idea that Mary is a metaphor for the secret garden itself. The garden that had belonged to Mr. Archibald Craven’s wife, which following her death had been locked and forgotten for ten years, the same age as Mary. The garden was allowed to fall into disarray, growing wild without the care of the wife. Mary was also allowed to grow wild, without a loving hand to guide her towards compassion and empathy for others.

As Mary grows, so does the garden. She learns how to connect with others and how to take care of herself. She learns about different lifestyles and realizes that happiness isn’t always equated to wealth. Not only viewing this story through a disability lens, but a lens that brings issues of race and class into the light as well has really helped me understand this story so far and hopefully will continue to do so as we read more.

I pledge.

Word count: 723