'Salad Bowl' versus 'Melting Pot'

‘SALAD BOWL’ AND ‘ANTI-SEMITISM’
IN ELMER RICE’S STREET SCENE

ABSTRACT

America is known as a country that consists of many kinds of ethnic groups. People have used the term ‘melting pot’ to illustrate the various kinds of ethnic groups in America for quite a long time. However, recently some new terms come up to substitute that term, such as ‘salad bowl’ and ‘mosaic’.
Street Scene—a drama written by Elmer Rice during the Depression Era shows that the term ‘melting pot’ is no longer suitable to illustrate the various kinds of ethnic groups in America.
Street Scene—a drama written by Elmer Rice during the Depression Era shows that the term ‘melting pot’ is no longer suitable to illustrate the various kinds of ethnic groups in America.
This paper entitled “Salad Bowl and Anti-Semitism in Elmer Rice’s Street Scene” will analyze how a group of people living in a tenement show their prejudice toward other dwellers; how they still praise their native countries where they come from; and how they do not really like American culture, the country where they live at present time.

Key words: drama, melting pot, salad bowl, anti-Semitism, ethnic group

INTRODUCTION

Drama is one of the three genres of literature that is given to students of Faculty of Language and Literature to sharpen their capability to analyze literary works. The material is taken from various sources, starting from classical works, such as The Odyssey by Homer, Hamlet written by William Shakespeare, until more modern works, such as A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. This paper, especially will talk about Modern American Drama.
In Chapter 8: American Drama—An Introduction Reuben divided Modern American Drama into three literary styles—realism, naturalism, and expressionism. Stage realism is the use of ordinary people, in ordinary settings, using commonplace dialect. Realistic plays show aspects of real people playing out conflicts and intrigues which reflect the ordinary experiences of American middle-lower class life. Recognizable heroes and villains were replaced with ordinary character showing ordinary thoughts and weakness.
Naturalism—a commonplace interchangeable with realism—assumes that humans are controlled by their environment, fate, psychology, chance or coincidence. Naturalistic situations are generally pessimistic and deterministic. Trapped and controlled, human behavior is instinctual and animalistic, there is heroism in a human’s desire to survive against insurmountable odds.
While in expressionistic plays, the playwright’s subjective sense of reality finds expression. The characters and the milieu may be realistic, but their presentation on stage is controlled by the writer’s personal biases and inclination (http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/8intro.html).
Street Scene—a play written by Elmer Rice in 1929—obviously falls into realistic play because it tells about ordinary life of people which happens in a cheap tenement in New York where many immigrants from low class society live. The play has more than twenty six characters. None of them has more important role than the others. Street Scene “spoke in the voice of the people, complete with vicious racial and ethnic slurs and raw hatreds on display” (http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/person/details/ 0,7621,BIO-P164197,00.html).
Street Scene—from which Elmer Rice got Pulitzer Prize (Gassner, 1949:566)—vividly portrays life in the early twentieth century New York teeming with people of all backgrounds living in a tenement. It portrays racial prejudices and hatred against other ethnics—problems that are always up-to-date until now.
Written in the Depression Era, Street Scene contains some problems faced by ordinary people at that time, such as racial and groups problems caused by a bulk of immigrants coming to New York by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, domestic conflicts that happened to many families and which were triggered b common problems from outside, etc. However, this paper only focuses on the melting pot—a metaphor used to describe who is an American—and anti Semitisms elements.
Street Scene depicts the life that happened in New York at the beginning of the Depression Era. Besides a bulk of immigrants came to New York from other continents—Europe and Asia—many black people from the Southern part of America also moved there since they considered New York as “the Mecca of opportunity” (http://www.columbia.edu/~bjp5/erica/history.html). No wonder, New York became very crowded and the dwellers of New York had to struggle to live decently.
In line with the real life portrayal in the play, historical criticism is used to explore Street Scene. Holman in his book A Handbook to Literature stated that historical criticism is criticism “that examines a work and describes and evaluates it in terms of the social, cultural, and historical context in which it was produced (1981:214). Due to the limited time, this paper will deal with the social and historical context only.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND THE BACKGROUND OF THE PLAY-WRIGHT AND THE PLAY

This chapter deals with the theoretical background of the analysis of the paper. “Melting pot” and “Anti-Semitism” are chosen here because when reading the play Street Scene, one will see clearly the description of those two elements. “Melting pot” is closely related to the many characters in the play who have various background, while “Anti-Semitism” is portrayed very clearly by Elmer Rice here with the presence of a Jewish family in the play.
This chapter also gives the background of the playwright—Elmer Rice—and the play itself—Street Scene. This chapter is provided here to give clear and complete information of the whole paper.

Melting Pot
The idea of melting pot is as old as the history of the United States itself. In 1782 Hector de Crevecoeur stated in his Letter III What is an American “…a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced … Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men …” (Baym, 1989:561).
From the quotation above, one can conclude that the United States is a country where people from different nationalities come and meet together, leave all their traditions behind and become new people with new manners, behavior, personality, and make up new traditions in their new country. The United States is the refuge for people who suffer from poverty and religious persecution because it offers its vast fertile land and freedom of religion for the new comers.
In 1908, a Jew from England, Israel Zangwill produced a play entitled “The Melting Pot”. One of the characters—David Quixano, a Russian Jewish immigrant—said that, “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!” (Glazer, 1970:289).
In the play, Zangwill portrays an intermarriage life between Quixano—a Jew—and his wife who comes from another ethnic. It conveys a message that still holds a tremendous power on the American imagination—the promise that all immigrants can be transformed into Americans, “a new alloy forged in a crucible of democracy, freedom and civic responsibility” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/ melt0222.htm).
In 1908, when the play “The Melting Pot” opened in Washington, the United States was in the middle of absorbing the largest influx of immigrants in its history—Irish and Germans, followed by Italians and East Europeans. Catholics and Jews—some of 18 million new citizens between 1890 and 1920 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/ melt0222. htm). The immigrants envisioned America as a vast land affording unlimited economic and social opportunities in an atmosphere free from harassment and interference. “By the mid-nineteenth century many came to this country with clear intentions of maintaining their separated cultural identities” (Rose, 1997:81).

Anti-Semitism
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia. org/wiki/Anti-Semitism) Anti-Semitism—opposite Philo-Semitism—is hatred directed against Jews. It typically takes the form of
Hostility toward Jews in a degree that greatly exceeds any legitimate grievances or resulting from no legitimate cause whatsoever, or
Disdain for supposed physical or moral features of Jews.
In the twentieth century, the most visible forms of anti-Semitism were
Racist anti-Semitism. Some people perceive Jews as people of racially distinct origin from other peoples, and claim that discrimination on the basis of such distinctness is valid
Religious anti-Semitism. Like almost every other religion in history, Judaism has faced discrimination and violence from people of competing faiths and in countries that practice state atheism.
In Economic anti-Semitism, many people believed that Jewish people—from medieval era to today—unfairly took away jobs and money from Christians. More commonly, there is prejudice against Jews on account of the fact that Jews are often, in spite of what ethnic and religious differences they have with the population at large, in positions of power and prestige. Hence, anti-Jewish prejudice is very often, by the defenders of Jews and Jewishness, ascribed to envy more than to any sort of religious concern. While racial anti-Semitism, the most modern form of anti-Semitism, is type of racism mixed with religious persecution. Racial anti-Semites believe erroneously that the Jewish people are at a distinct race. They also believe that Jews are inherently inferior to people of other races.
Besides provided by Wikipedia free encyclopedia, explanation about Anti-Semitism is also found in Grolier Academic Encyclopedia, which states that Anti-Semitism is “a form of prejudice towards Jews that may range from mild antipathy to violent hatred (1983:68)

The Background of the Playwright and the Play
Born Elmer Reizenstein in New York in 1892, he was a high school dropout who developed an interest in the legal profession and graduated cum laude from New York Law School at age 20. in 1913, he decided to try his hand at writing plays. The result was On Trial, a courtroom drama that he presented unsolicited to a producer and which proved good enough to get produced on Broadway, where it was a hit (http://www.movies.yahoo.com/shop?d= hc&id=1800077155cf=biog&intl=us).
From the 1914 until the mid 1940s, rice—he changed his last name into Rice in order not to be misunderstood over the telephone—was one of the most prominent playwrights and theatrical directors in America, and made important contribution to motion pictures, both as an author and screenwriter. His most-widely-studies drama The Adding Machine was written in 1923, a strange, expressionist play about a lifelong office worker, Mr. Zero, who loses his job to the device of the title, murders, his boss, is tried and executed, and ends up in heaven operating the very device that cost him his job, until he is returned to earth. (http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/person/details/0,7621,BIO-P164197,00. html)
Street Scene—Rice’s most famous play—was written in 1928, and produced on Broadway in 1929. in 1931, the King Vidor movie version, based on Rice’s own screen adaptation, utilized a huge set the size of a city block that gave the screen drama a subtly enveloping quality (http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/ person/details/0,7621,BIO-P164197,00.html) Street Scene became an opera in 1947 with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes. In 2002, The Department of Arts of California State University played it March 6-10 directed by Randy Wonzong (http://www. newsreview.com/issues/chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp)

THE MELTING POT AND ANTI-SEMITISM IN ELMER RICE’S STREET SCENE

THE MELTING POT
It has been mentioned before that “the melting pot” is the idea of the melting of all kinds of races to be one new race. This term is used to describe the race “American”. Recently, however, the demographies of the United States are changing in profound and unprecedented ways but so to are the very notions of assimilation and the melting pot that have been articles of faith in the American self-image for generations. There is a sense that, especially as immigrant populations reach a critical mass in many communities, it is no longer the melting pot that is transforming them. In fact, the concept of assimilation is being called into question as never before. Some sociologists argue that the melting pot often means little more than “Anglo conformity” and that assimilation is not always a positive experience—for either society or the immigrants themselves. And with today’s emphasis on diversity and ethnicity, it has become easier than ever for immigrants to avoid the melting pot entirely. Even the metaphor itself is changing, having fallen out of fashion completely with many immigration advocacy and ethnic groups. They prefer such terms as the “salad bowl” and the “mosaic”, metaphors that convey more of a sense of separateness in describing this nation of immigrants. In a salad, a tomato slice does not marry a radish to produce hybrid offspring (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp/ srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/melt0521.htm#TOP).
To describe Street Scene, Randy Wonzong used the term the melting pot, “If you want to see the Walt Disney version of the American melting pot, you’d better forget it. This is the melting pot the way it was (http://www.newsreview.com/issues/chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp)
However, the idea of ‘melting’—people from various nationalities come to America to seek for a better life and leave their heritage of the country behind, and in the new country they blend with people from other races and make up a new race—can be used only after the second, third, etc generation of the immigrants were born. They are more ‘American’ than their parents, grandparents, because of the American culture they face and undergo since born. “The process of assimilating or melting will be much easier when there is intermarriage among ethnic groups” (http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/ edlead/9405/janzen.html). For example, if an Irish man is married to a German woman, there is a big possibility that the Irish man will not stick to his Irish heritage, and his wife will not stick to her German heritage either. It is very possible that they will create “new heritage” in their own family to be adhered by their children.
Furthermore, Peter Rose stated in his book entitled They and We that the melting pot philosophy, while far more democratic in intent, came to be seen by many keen observers as “unrealistic”. People were not about to simply mix together in the great crucible to form one new American type, the result of a blend of the cultural ingredients of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Recognition of this fact encourages the emergence of the “idea of cultural pluralism” (1997:86).
Street Scene tells a story of six immigrant families, the Kaplans, the Russian Jews; the Fiorentinos, the Italians; the Olsens, the Swede, the Maurrants, the Irish; and the other two families whose native countries are unknown—the Buchanans and the Heldebrands. In the tenement also lived the Jones, the New Yorker. The Irish man is married to an Irish woman, the Italian man is married to an Italian woman, etc. No inter-marriage life is portrayed here.
The time when the play was written belongs to the Depression Era. People face many kinds of problems—e.g. economic, social, and political, etc. The New Yorkers blamed the new immigrants for causing the difficult time. “Many Americans of native stock saw the new immigrants as a threat …” (Tindall, 1984:792). This kind of racial prejudice towards the new comers can be seen clearly in the play.
MRS. JONES. What them foreigners don’t know about bringing up babies would fill a book. (Gassner, 1949:57)
In commenting about the Olsens’ way to keep their baby, Mrs. Jones, the New Yorker, used the word ‘foreigners’. It shows that she still saw them not as American. It shows her prejudice toward people coming from other country. That comment of Mrs. Jones was cut by Mrs. Fiorentino, the Italian, “Foreigners know joost as much as other people, Mrs. Jones” (Gassner, 1949:570). As a new comer in that city, Mrs. Fiorentino showed dislike when she was still considered a foreigner and in Mrs. Jones’ statement one can conclude that coming from out of America, the Olsens are considered to have a lower status than those born there, because Mrs. Jones’ comment underestimated her. Mrs. Jones’ comment was for the Olsens, but Mrs. Fiorentino—realizing that she was not native there—felt that the comment was conveyed to her too.
In another part of the play, Maurrant said, “We don’t want foreigners comin’ in, tellin’ us how to run things” (Gassner, 1949:577). Maurrant is an Irish, but he also used the term ‘foreigners’ to talk about other people to show his dislike. And like Mrs. Jones, he was also cut by Mrs. Fiorentino, “It’s nothing wrong to be a foreigner. Many good people are foreigners” (Gassner, 1949:577).
The abovementioned quotations show that those people do not melt together. Mrs. Jones has prejudice towards new comers in New York, and Maurrant also has prejudice towards people coming from other countries. Living in a crammed building like that did not automatically make those people feel like one big family. They still cannot trust their neighbors, even gossiping another dweller in the tenement becomes one favorite pastime.
LIPPO I betcha ‘e’s got ‘nudder woman. He find a nice blonda chicken, ‘e runaway.
MRS. JONES There ought to be a law against women goin’ around, stealin’ other women’s husbands. (Gassner, 1949:576)
Here is another quotation.
MISS CUSHING. (breathlessly, as she comes up the left of the stoop) Say, what do you think! I just saw them together—the two of them!
MRS. JONES. (rising excitedly) What did I tell you?
MRS. FIORENTINO. Where did you see them, Miss Cushing?
MISS CUSHING. Why, right next door, in the entrance to the warehouse. They were standing right close together. And he had his hands up on her shoulders. It’s awful, isn’t it?
JONES. Looks to me like this thing is gettin’ pretty serious.
MRS. JONES. You didn’t notice if they was kissin’ or anythin’, did you?
(Gassner, 1949:573)
Gossiping, talking bad things about other dwellers becomes daily activity. Besides, some of the families still stick to their native country and the traditions. Filippo’s description of the beauty of his native country also strengthens the fact that he does not melt with his new country yet. He still does not feel that he is an American, though he lives in the United States.
LIPPO. Ah, ees bew-tiful!! Ees most bew-tiful place in whole worl’. You hear about Sorrent’, ha?
ROSE. No, I don’t think I ever did.
LIPPO (incredulously). You never hear about Sorrent’?
ROSE. No, I don’t know much about geography. Is it a big place?
LIPPO. Ees not vera beeg—but ever’body know Sorrent’. Sorrento gentile! La bella Sorrento! You hear about Napoli—Baia di Napoli?
ROSE. Oh yes, the Bayof Naples! Is it near there?
LIPPO. Sure, ees on Bay of Napoli. Ees bew-tiful! Ees all blue. Sky blue, water blue, sun ees shine all time.
(Gassner, 1949:591)
While Lippo shows his admiration of his native country’s beauty, Maurrant shows dislike of the tradition in the United States.
MAUTRANT. I’ll give him a god fannin’ when I get hold of him
MRS. MAURRANT. Ah, don’t whip him, Frank, please don’t. all boys are wild like that, when they’re that age.
JONES. Sure! My boy Vincent was the same way. An’ look at him today—drivin’ his own taxi an’ makin’ a good livin’.
LIPPO. (leaning on the balustrade). Ees jussa same t’ing wit’ me. w’en Ahm twelve year, I run away—I don’t never see my parent again.
MAURRANT. That’s all right about that. But it ain’t gonna be that way in my family.
(Gassner, 1949:576).
In another part of the play one can find
MRS. FIORENTINO. (soothingly). Things are different nowadays, Mr. Maurrant, from what they used to be.
MAURRANT. Not in my family, they’re not goin’ to be no different. Not so long as I got somethin’ to say.
(Gassner, 1949:571)
The quotations above clearly show Maurrant’s reluctance to blend with the American culture at that time. He considers the American culture that he faces every day bad so that he does not want his family to be influenced by it. Here is another quotation describing Maurrant’s dislike of the American culture.
MAURRANT. … Look at what’s happenin’ to people’s homes, with all this divorce an’ one thing an’ another. Young girls goin’ around smokin’ cigarettes an’ their skirts up around their necks. An’ a lot o’ long-haired guys talkin’ about free love an’ birth control an’ breakin’ up decent people’s homes. I tell you it’s time somethin’ was done to put the fear o’ God into people. (Gassner, 1949:578).
Rose, Maurrant’s daughter, says of Mrs. Jones’ children, the New Yorker, “She and those wonderful children of hers!” (Gassner, 1949:593). This sentence is ironical because Rose comments about Mrs. Jones’ son—Vincent—who tries to abuse her one night, and Mrs. Jones’ daughter—Mae—who sleeps with a boy in the boy’s friend’s house. It means that, like her father, Rose does not like the American culture that she faces in the place where she and her family live.
From the discussion above, it can be concluded that the people living in that tenement do not make a new race. The characters of the play still show their nativity, they do not blend to make a new race. It is more appropriate to use the metaphor ‘salad bowl’ or ‘mosaic’ than ‘melting pot’ to depict the scenes in this play because one still can see clearly which is the Jew, the Italian, the Irish, and the New Yorkers.

ANTI-SEMITISM
Anti-Semitism—the hatred directly against Jews—can be seen clearly in the play. Some characters in the play show their dislike toward Jews. The following quotation shows mild antipathy toward Jews. Lippo, the Italian, comments on Sam Kaplan, the Jew.
LIPPO. … Look! ‘Eresa da boy. ‘Esa walk along da street an’ reada da book. Datsa da whola troub’; reada too much book (Gassner, 1949:578)
LIPPO (Rising to his feet and yelling after him). Wotsa matter you? … ‘Eesa reada too mucha book. Ees bad for you. (Gassner, 1949:581)
The Jew—due to their bitter background, e.g. pogrom in their native country, Russia, or extermination by Hitler—move to the United States to seek freedom, so that they work hard and study hard too. It is considered something awful by other races.
MRS. JONES. Yeah. Leave it to the Jews not to lose a workin’ day, without makin’ up for it. (Gassner, 1949:571)
That quotation shows Mrs. Jones’ not willing to understand why the Jews still think about working although there is a very crucial thing happens in the office—the owner has just died and will be buried. She thinks it will be understandable if the office is closed without obliging the employees to work overtime the day before when such a crucial thing happens. It shows that the Jews are hard workers, but other ethnic groups do not like that.
LIPPO. No, ees no good-Jew. ‘E’s only t’ink about money, money—alla time money. (Gassner, 1949:592)
In another part of the play, Rice shows more violent hatred than afore-mentioned ones. Kaplan is involved in a serious discussion with some other tenement dwellers that it almost ends up in a violent attack by Maurrant to Kaplan.
KAPLAN. Who’s toking about electing presidents? Ve must put de tuls of industry in de hends of de working-klesses and dis ken be accomplished only by a sushal revolution.
MAURRANT. Yeah? Well, we don’t want no revolutions in this country, see?
(General chorus of assent)
MRS. JONES. I know all about that stuff—teachin’ kids there ain’t no Gawd an’ that their gran’fathers was monkeys.
JONES. (rising ,angrily). Free love, like they got in Russia, huh?
(KAPLAN makes a gesture of impatient disgust, and sinks back into his chair.)
MAURRANT. There’s goddam many o’ you Bolshevikis runnin’ aroun’ loose. If you don’t like the way things is run here, why in hell don’t you go back where you came from?
(Gassner, 1949:577)
The quotation above shows how the dwellers of the tenement do not like their Jewish neighbor. Maurrant, Jones, and his wife argue Kaplan, an elderly Jewish who still sticks to his native country’s tradition. Wonzong described Kaplan as “a political activist, an old Jewish guy who talks about capitalism and the need for some sort of reform against greedy corporations, crooked politicians and the influence of Big Money” (http://www.newsreview.com/issues/chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp)
JONES. Like I heard a feller sayin’: the Eye-talians built New York, the Irish run it an’ the Jews own it.
(Laughter)
MRS. FIORENTINO (convulsed). Oh! Dot’s funny!
JONES (pleased with his success). Yep; the Jews own it all right.
MAURRANT. Yeah, an’ they’re the ones that’s doin’ all the kickin’.
(Gassner, 1949:577)
From the quotation above, one can see that no one likes the Jews in the tenement. Shirley, Kaplan’s daughter who is there when that happens does not try to defend her ‘community’, she just said, “It’s no disgrace to be a Jew, Mr. Maurrant” (Gassner, 1949:577). She understands pretty well that many people do not like Jews so that she does not try to argue. Referring to what is stated previously under sub-heading Anti-Semitism, it is universally known that racial prejudice against Jews is understandable. It is alright to have that feeling and Shirley knows that. This play is written in the Depression Era, and Peter Rose says that “the search for scapegoats during the Great Depression often found the Jews … targets for the bitter frustrations felt by many Americans because some Jews were extremely successful financially” (1997:56).
Commenting on Rose’s close relationship with Sam, Kaplan’s son, Mrs. Jones says, “If you don’t mind sayin’ it in front of your daughter, either—I’d think twice before I’d let any child o’ mine bring a Jew into the family” (Gassner, 1949:593). For Mrs. Jones, to marry a Jew is something which is not tolerable for other ethnic groups. She does not support the idea of inter-marriage between a Jew and someone from other ethnic group.
Besides that, from Shirley’s side, it seems that she thinks that to be a Jew even makes her feel to be more than the other race. It can be seen from the following quotation.
SHIRLEY. You’ve got your head so full of that Rose Maurrant upstairs that you don’t want to eat or sleep or anything anymore.
SAM. I don’t feel like eating, why should I eat? (Bursting out) You’re always telling me: “Eat!” “Don’t eat!” “Get up!” “Go to bed!” I know what I want to do, without being told.
SHIRLEY. I don’t see, just when you’re graduating from college, why you want to get mixed up with a little batzimer like that!
SAM. It’s always the same thing over again with you. you never can get over your race prejudice. I’ve told you a hundred times that the Jews are no better than anybody else.
(Gassner, 1949:590)
The quotation above shows that for Shirley other races are worse than the Jew, the Jew is the best. She does not agree when Sam has a special relationship with Rose who is not a Jew. The following quotation strengthens this argument.
ROSE. I haven’t tried to vamp Sam, honestly I haven’t. We just seemed sort of naturally to like each other.
SHIRLEY. Why must you pick out Sam? You could get other fellows. Anyhow, it’s much better to marry with your own kind. When you marry outside your own people, nothing good ever comes of it. You can’t mi oil and water.
(Gassner, 1949:597)
Here, one can conclude that people other than Jews do not like them, and Jews do not like people from other races either. They do not like one another. It this is the case, racial prejudice between Jews and other races will always exist.

CONCLUSION
From the discussion previously, one can conclude that this play—Street Scene—really shows anti-Semitism. Besides, it also contains another element—that is the metaphor “salad bowl”. Some new immigrants depicted in the play do not show that they blend themselves with the culture they find and face in America after migrating there. The Irish family show their dislike of the culture they are supposed to engage in. The New Yorker family show their dislike to the new comers by calling their immigrant neighbors as “foreigners”. The Italian still worship his native country’s beauty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baym, Nina, et. all. eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, 2nd edition, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.
Gassner, John, ed. Twenty Five Best Plays of the Modern American Theater, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc. 1949.
Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Maynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1970
Grolier Academic Encyclopedia, vol.2. published by Grolier International, 1983
Holman, Hugh, A Handbook to Literature, 4th edition, Indianapolis: Bobs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1981
Rose, Peter I, They and We, 5th edition, New York: The Mc-Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. 1997
Tindall, George Brown, America, A Narrative History, 1984, W.W. Norton Company, New York
Brian, John, Taking it to the Street, (http://www.newsreview.com/issues/ chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp accessed on February 25, 2003)
Booth, William, One Nation, Indivisible: Is it History? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/ melt0222.htm accessed on March 16, 2003
Branigin, William, Immigrants Shunning Idea of Assimilation, (http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp/srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/melt0525a.htm#TOP accessed on March 16, 2003
Janzen, Rod, Melting Pot or Mosaic? (http://www.ascd/org.readingroom/edlead/ 9405/janzen.html accessed on March 16, 2003)
http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/person/details/0,7621,BIO-P164197,00.html accessed on February 25, 2003
http://www.movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&id=1800077155cf=biog&intl=us accessed on February 25, 2005
Reuben, Paul, “Chapter 8: American Drama—An Introduction” PAL: Perspectives in American Literature—A Research and Reference Guide (http://www.csustan. edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/8intro.html accessed on February 25, 2003
________, A Historical Background of the Harlem Renaissance, (http://www.columbia.edu~ubjb5/erica/history.html accessed on March 13, 2003

America = a Dream

AMERICA – A NOT-YET-COME-TRUE DREAM

ABSTRACT

America is popularly known as a country which offers freedom towards its people. Freedom here can mean freedom to speak, freedom to do anything to get success, freedom to do anything people like. It is symbolized with the statue of Miss Liberty in New York. Therefore, America becomes a dream for people who feel constrained in their life in their native country. It makes them migrate to the United States. This paper talks about America as a dream that in fact has not come true yet, especially for African American people which use to be more popularly called Black people.

INTRODUCTION

Authors write to express and perpetuate their intellectual and emotional experiences, their observations and conclusions. They write to relate to others the process of their thoughts, the creation of their imaginings. In expressing their experiences and intellectual processes, authors also want to interpret the meaning contained in them. They search for the meaning of life in the realities of their experiences, in the realities of their dreams, hopes, and memories (Chapman, 1972: 394)
That is exactly what Langston Hughes does through his works—poems, short stories, songs, novels, plays, and autobiographies. In one of his autobiographies entitled THE BIG SEA, Hughes said that he wrote his best poems when he felt worst. When he was happy, he did not write anything (Hughes, 1958:351). He expresses his experiences and intellectual processes in his writings “To explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America” (http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/hughes.html accessed on February 21, 2003). The one of his most often reprinted poems in anthologies—“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”—was written on the train during his trip to Mexico just outside St. Louis, as the train left for Texas. When the train crossed the Mississippi, slowly, over a log bridge, he looked out the window at the great muddy river flowing down toward the heart of the South. Hughes began to think what that old Mississippi river had meant to Negroes in the past—how to be sold down the river was the worst fate that could overtake a slave in times of bondage. It made him feel very bad, and it gave him an idea to write a poem (Hughes, 1958:351-352). Written when Hughes felt very bad, the poem became one of his best poems.
As mentioned above that Hughes writes to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America, his works are replete with the condition in America at that time with its Jim Crow Law. Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 and died on May 22, 1967 so that he experienced the bitterness and unfairness of that law. In one of his speeches entitled “My America”, Hughes said that his ancestry went back at least four generations on American soil (Hughes, 1958:500). His background and training was purely American—the schools of Kansas, Ohio, and the East. He was “old stock” as opposed to those who just migrated to America by the end of nineteenth century and the early of twentieth century. However, those newcomers enjoyed more facilities—e.g. accommodations when traveling about the country, better job opportunities, and education—than the native-born but colored Americans. It is only a matter of the color of their complexion.
Three poems are chosen to be discussed in this paper. They are “Freedom’s Plow”, “Let America be America Again”, and “Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?” The title of this paper is AMERICA – A DREAM THAT HAS NOT COME TRUE YET. The first poem—taken from THE LANGSTON HUGHES READER—describes that America itself is a dream. The last two poems—taken from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGES—describe how the dream is only a dream; it has never come to the reality for centuries.

AMERICA AS A DREAM

When talking about American Dream, one can come to many kinds of interpretation. In her article entitled “Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation” (1995), Hochschild says that the American Dream consists of tenets about achieving success. People most often define success as the achievement of high income, a prestigious job, and economic security. When doing survey about what Americans dream and what immigrants dream when migrating to the United States, Hochschild finds out that they want to have a good chance of improving their standard of living (http://www.pup.princeton.edu/chapter5/s5712.html). In other words, they want to have a better life.
In his poem entitled “Freedom’s Plow”, Hughes describes that America is built by people who come from various classes of society.

A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came across the sea
Bringing Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new—
To a new world, America!

Different classes of society are they from, but they share the same dream, freedom.

Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom
But the word was there always
FREEDOM

In line 142, Hughes writes America is a dream. America itself is a dream, a country that Crevecoeur describes in his “Lettrs from an American Farmer” that “ it is not composed of great lords who possess everything and of a herd of people who have nothing … The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other … because they are equitable … Here man is free as he ought to be” (Baym, 1989: 559). Therefore, America is a dream place for persecuted and poor people who escape from their native country.
America is a dream to which the early immigrants move—a dream to get what they do not have in the country where they are born. Each of them has their own dreams too.

With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and reams, women and dreams

Lines 35-36 above show when they move to their dream place, they also have their own dreams. The early immigrants have a dream to get freedom of choosing religion and getting rid of poverty. The immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century have a dream to achieve success—meaning high income, prestigious jobs, economic security.
In stanza eight, lines 91-95, Hughes quoted Jefferson’s

His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too
And silently took for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.

Those lines show that America is still a dream place for the black people although they have been enslaved for more than a century. For black people, those amazing words give them a dream that they will be equal with their fellow white citizens.

AMERICA AS A DREAM IS A FAILURE

In the same aforementioned article, Hochschild writes that success can also be connoted as “a right to say what they wanta say, do what they wanta do, and fashion a world into something that can be great for everyone”. In another part of that article, quoting Bruce Springsteen, Hochschild writes, “I don’t think the American Dream was that everybody was going to have an opportunity and the chance to live a life with some decency and some dignity and a chance for some self-respect (http://www.pup.princeton.edu/chapter5/s5712.html)
However, the existence of Jim Crow Law made black Americans not be able to have rights to say, do what they want to do, and have an opportunity and the chance to live a life with decency and dignity and a chance for self-respect. In one of his well-known speeches—entitled “I Have a Dream”—delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expresses his dream “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal” (http://www.toptags.com/aama/voices/speeches_speech1.htm). He dreams that one day black and white children will go playing and eating together at the same table. He dreams that one day black and white people will go studying at the same school. He dreams that one day he sees his children grow up and be respected by other people based on their dignity, and not despised because of the color of their skin.
Again, in his sermon delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia on July 4, 1965, Dr. King again referred to what is stated in the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God, Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (Baym, 1989: 640) as a great dream which is very universal, everywhere in the world people have rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although during those two years (1963-1965) he sees that his dreams are shattered, Dr. King still encourages his congregation to have that dream, expecting that is will come true one day. (http://www.standord.edu/group/King/sermons/650704 TheAmericanDream.html)
In the poem “Let America Be America Again” (1938), Hughes expresses how the dream—that human beings are created equal—fails to come true. It speaks of the freedom and equality that America boasts, but it never comes true yet.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free”)

What Crevecoeur says in “Letters from an American Farmer”, and the founding fathers write in the Declaration of Independence do not come true yet. In this poem, though, Hughes plead fulfillment of the dream not only for the downtrodden Negro, he also includes other minority groups, such as the poor white and the Indian—people that share the same dream that has not come true yet.

I am the poor White, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dogs eat dogs, of mighty crush the weak

Not only do the Black suffer from inequality, other minority groups feel the same way too. The poor white who do not get what they dream to get when migrating to America, the Negro who have black history during slavery time, and the native who are driven away on their own land—all of them feel that what is stated in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal stays a dream only, that never comes true.

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,

In the above lines, Hughes again emphasizes that America is just a dream, because America never becomes what he thinks it should be. Yet, in the following lines, from the same stanza Hughes writes

And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Those two lines describes Hughes’ firm willing that one day America will be like that people dream it should be. The use of the exclamation mark shows Hughes’ optimism that the dream will come true—America will be a place where everybody is equal, everybody has a chance to live a life with decency and dignity and a chance for self-respect.
The last poem “Will V-Day Be Me-Day, Too?” is written during the World War II. When the U.S. plunged into the World War II, Hughes escaped military service but he put his pen to work on behalf of political involvement and nationalism (http://www.galegroup.com/free-resources/bhm/bio/hughes1.htm).
Different from the second poem where he represented all the minority groups in the United States, in the last poem, Hughes represented his own race. Black Americans also went to war to defend their country just like white Americans did. He encouraged his fellow black citizens to support the United States in its goals abroad, and at the same time he also encouraged the government to provide its own citizens at home the same freedom being advocated abroad (http://www.galegroup.com/free-resources/bhm/bio/ hughes1.htm).
In the second poem, Hughes shows optimism that America will be America to him someday. On the contrary, in the third poem, Hughes questions it whether after the war is over and America wins, the Black will have a better life.

So, this is what I want to know

When we see Victory’s glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
Hold me back?
When all those foreign folks who’ve waited—
Italians, Chinese, Danes—are liberated
Will I still be ill-fated
Because I’m black?

In this poem, Hughes does not represent other minority groups anymore, because the others can get the equality easily—even the Chinese who were rejected to enter the United States by the end of the nineteenth century can be liberated more quickly than the Black.
Black Americans join the World War II to show their loyalty to the government, to the land where they are born and raised. Behind this action, there must be a political reason. By seeing their loyalty toward the country and the bravery to fight the enemy, the government is expected that they will change their policy, to make their dream come true—the Black are equal to the White.
While in the second poem, one can feel the optimistic tone—especially in the lines 79-80, in the third poem Hughes keep questioning:

When this war comes to an end,
Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car
Like cattle?

Or will you stand up like a man
At home and take your stand
For Democracy?
That’s all I ask of you.
When we lay the guns away
To celebrate
Our Victory Day
WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY TOO?
That’s what I want to know.

Instead of using exclamation mark like in the second poem, in the third poem, Hughes uses question mark showing he is not sure whether the Black will be equal with the White. Reading Dr. King’s sermon given in 1965, two decades later after the World War II ends, one can conclude that after the World War II is over, the Black still suffer from inequality. The dream does not come true yet.

CONCLUSION

Langston Hughes—a Negro author—writes to explain and illuminates the Negro condition in America. In his three poems discussed here, one can see the condition in the United States. The first poem—“Freedom’s Plow—shows that America is a dream. It is a dream place where people migrate to achieve dreams they have in their own mind. The second poem—“Let America Be America Again”—shows that America as a dream land is really only a dream for some minority groups that never comes true. The third poem—“Will V-Day Be Me-Day, Too?”—is still questioning whether the dream will be reality for all people living in the United States regardless the color of their skin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baym, Nina, et. al. ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 3rd edition, vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1989.
Chapman, Abraham, New Black Voices, An Anthology of Contemporary Afro-American Literature, New American Library, New York, 1972
Harper, Donna A.S. ed. Langston Hughes, http://www.galegroup.com/free_ resources/bhm/hughes_l.htm March 30, 2003
Hochschild, Jennifer L, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation, Princeton University Press, 1995 http://www.pup.princeton.edu/chapter9/s5715.html March 4, 2003
Hughes, Langston, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Harold Ober Associates Inc. 1994
Hughes, Langston, The Langston Hughes Reader, George Braziller, Inc. New York, 1958
King, Martin L., The American Dream, http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/sermons/ 650704TheAmericanDream.html February 21, 2003
King, Martin L., I Have a Dream, http://www.toptags.com/aama/voices/speeches/ speech1.htm March 4, 2003
Meier, August, et. al. ed. Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edition, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. New York, 1971
Presley, James, on “Let America Be America Again” http://www.engish.uiuc.edu/maps/ poets/g_l/america.htm February 21, 2003
Reuben, Paul P, “Chapter 9: Harlem Renaissance—Langston Hughes” PAL: Perspectives in American Literature—A Research and Reference Guide, http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/hughes.html February 21, 2003
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html February 25, 2003

Chapter Two ...

The following is the second chapter of my thesis that has a title : A REFLECTION OF PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA: A CASE STUDY OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S “THE YELLOW WALLPAPER”. I just want to illustrate about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s background in a nutshell. If you are really interested in knowing more, you can do the research more thoroughly yourself.

CHAPTER II
THE BIOGRAPHY AND INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND OF
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
2.1 The Biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford Connecticut. She was the youngest child and only daughter of the marriage of Mary Ann Fitch Wescott (1829-1893) and Frederick Beecher Perkins (1828-1899). They got married in 1857, had three children in three years: the first child, Thomas, died within one month; another son, named Thomas too, 1859-1938; and Gilman was born on July 3, 1860. Gilman’s mother conceived another girl, who lived only eight months in 1866. Frederick deserted the family in 1869, but visited them occasionally. They got divorced in 1873. (Ceplair, ed. 1991:9).
The wrecked marriage of her parents made Gilman and her brother and mother move nineteen times in eighteen years, from one relative’s house to another, from one city to another. Her mother’s financial dependency forced them to do that. Her mother didn’t have any skills that enabled her to support her children. Besides, as a woman coming from middle-class society, Mary believed that she was not supposed to work. It made Gilman think since she was very young that if a woman were dependent on a man (her husband), she would live in suffering when her husband deserted her. It evoked Charlotte’s strict character that a woman needed to be economically independent. It could be seen in her later years through her writings and lectures.
Gilman remembered her father as a frustrated man. He left his wife after knowing that his wife would not be able to have another baby. He attended Yale College but never graduated, and studied law but never practiced. He was a genteel reformer, believing in the restoration of the pre-industrial family. He believed women should have interests outside the home before they married but when married should “find perfect gratification in their own homes, in their families.” He spent the rest of his life as an editor, librarian, and a writer, but did not earn a sufficient income to support his family. (Ceplair, 1991:10)
Gilman described her mother as the most domestic type of a housewife. After her idolized youth, she was left neglected. After her flood of lovers, she became a deserted wife. Since she was not financially independent, she had to live under her relatives’ pity. Gilman, her brother Thomas, and the mother lived with Gilman’s grandparents from Frederick, with her grandparents from Mary, with Frederick’s aunts, and other relatives again.
In such a situation, Mary surely could not express tenderness toward her children, Thomas and Gilman. Gilman remembered her mother as someone who denied the children all expression of affection as far as possible, so that the children should not be used to it or long for it. (Ceplair, ed. 1991:11).
In that kind of unhappy childhood Gilman grew up. A bad image of Frederick as her father gave her a bad image of a man to be a husband. Therefore in her teenaged years, Gilman didn’t have any idea to be close to men. In fact, when she was 19 years old, she experienced her first intense emotional connection with a female friend, Martha Luther. Gilman illustrated her relationship with Martha as “a compact of mutual understanding” and her “first deep personal happiness”. Therefore, Martha’s engagement with Charles A. Lane in 1882 made Gilman broken-hearted. To reflect the beautiful moments she spent together with Martha, Gilman wrote in her autobiography,
With Martha I knew perfect happiness. … Four years of satisfying happiness with Martha, then she married and moved away. … And I had no one else.” (via Ceplair, 1991: 14)
Apparently Gilman was disappointed by her expectation to live together with Martha. She was also traumatic because of the failure of her parents’ marriage. These two things made her decide not to get involved with a love relationship. She buried her pain in work.
However, not long after that, Gilman met Charles Walter Stetson, her first husband. Charles—a talented artist—who fell in love with her asked her to marry him. Gilman’s bitter past made her decline Charles’ proposal though she felt a strong physical attraction to him. The question of marriage threatened the divide she had established between work and love. She wrote in her autobiography:
On the one hand I knew it was normal and right in general, and held that a woman should be able to have marriage and motherhood, and do her work in the world also. On the other, I felt strongly that for me it was not right, that the nature of the life before me forbade it, that I ought to forego the more intimate personal happiness for complete devotion to my work. (via Ceplair, 1991:15)
Though doubtful about marriage life, Gilman married Charles on May 2, 1884, two years after they met. Gilman’s doubt turned out to be right because not long after delivering her daughter, Katharine, in April 1885, Gilman underwent nervous exhaustion. Her husband’s conventional opinion about a wife’s role made her condition worse. Though in the beginning of their relationship Charles seemed to admire her independence and nonconformity of spirit, Gilman’s worldly ambition hurt his ego as a man. He wrote in his diary:
She had one of those spasms of wanting to make a name for herself in the world by doing good work: wanting to have people know her as Charlotte Perkins, not as the wife of me. … It may be … from ill-digested reading of philosophical works mixed with her imagination and the tradition of what she ought to inherit from her parents. (via Ceplair, 1991:16)
Her nervous breakdown made Gilman go to Philadelphia to be treated by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the greatest nerve specialist at that time. Apparently Gilman was suffering from post-natal depression. In the nineteenth century, motherhood was believed to be one cause that led women to mental breakdown. In that era, women’s madness was labeled hysteria (Goodman, 1996:117). Identifying Gilman’s disease as hysteria, Mitchell prescribed “rest cure” while she was in Philadelphia, and a life of enforced passivity when she returned home. Gilman wrote in her autobiography that Mitchell advised her to
Live as domestic life as possible. Have your child with you all the time. Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours’ intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live. (via Ceplair, 1991:20)
Hysteria was considered a “fashionable” disease for women in the nineteenth century America (Golden, 1999:110). Women who were judged to suffer from hysteria were women who were “unfeminine—in other words, sexually aggressive, intellectually ambitious, and defective in proper womanly submission and selflessness.” (Golden, 1992:111). In Gilman’s case, she was detected to undergo that disease because of her intellectual ambition, especially, and later also her defectiveness in her role as a wife and mother.
To live passively was absolutely a problematic situation for a woman who was as intelligent, imaginative, and ambitious as Gilman. Therefore, Gilman thought that Mitchell’s prescribed cure and advice just led her to the edge of insanity. After three months, she found out that the cure didn’t work well on her, it even made her nervous breakdown worse, Gilman decided to get back to her “normal” life—working. She was cured by removing herself physically from her home, husband, and finally her child, and by engaging in and writing about the social movements of the day. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournal/ old-WILLA/fall95/De Simone.html
She resumed writing and lecturing to all over America. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was the result of her experience under Mitchell’s medication. She wrote that short story, especially, to criticize Mitchell’s rest cure that in fact didn’t really cure people suffering from nervous breakdown. Such a cure even proved to be on the way around, to lead people to insanity. “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked”, Gilman wrote in “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (via Bauer, 1998:349).
Realizing that her marriage life spurred her to suffer from nervous breakdown, Gilman, with Charles’s knowing, filed divorce in 1892 and it was granted in April 1894. In June that same year, Charles married Grace Ellery Channing, and Gilman sent her daughter, Katharine, to live together with them.
In June 1900, Charlotte married her cousin, George Houghton Gilman in Detroit. Katharine came to live with them at the end of July. Different from Charles whose ideals about women’s roles in a marriage were conventional, George was supportive of her intense involvement in social reform. http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/bio/ gilman_c.htm This second marriage lasted until George died in May 1934. Before that, in 1932, doctors found an inoperable cancer growing in her breast. She had always believed that human beings should not have to suffer from chronic pain, torment, and misery. Therefore, she committed suicide on August 17, 1935. In her suicide note, she wrote,
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune or “broken heart” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains.
But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. (via Ceplair, 1991:275)
Several days before her suicide, Charlotte Perkins Gilman—a “Deist with no concern for an afterlife” (http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/ sch00019.html)—wrote that people not only had right to live, they had right to die as well.

2.2 Intellectual Background of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
L.A. Lowe said that Charlotte Perkins Gilman was sociology’s first radical feminist theorist whose critical social theory and thematic methodology continue to reverberate in the musings and writings of today’s critical social and feminist theorists. http://employment. education.uiowa.edu/lalowe/034_201_ePortfolio/ GILMAN_PAPER.htm Despite her nervous breakdown that she suffered during her lifetime, Gilman was a prolific writer. She wrote a lot of articles, short stories, poems, books, plays, and novels with various topics. For her, writing is more than a form of work, it is also a means of expressing identity. (Goodman, 2001:110) Besides writing, she also lectured throughout the United States and Europe. She believed that in communicating, both in writing and lecturing, people must do that with a real purpose in their mind. (Bauer, 1998:351). In her case, especially, her purpose in writing and lecturing was to educate women and give them the means to change their role in a male-dominated society; she stressed equality both socially and economically.
Her writings were spread in many kinds of magazines, newspapers, and journals. Her highest success in her writing career was acknowledged when she published her own journal, the Forerunner from 1909 until 1916. In this monthly journal, she wrote and edited all the articles there herself, which she claimed could fill 28 long books. The Forerunner was regarded as Gilman’s “vehicle for advancing social awareness.” http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/bio/gilman_c. htm In fact, the central theme of this journal was that social and human development were hampered by sexual dysfunctions that could only be removed when women were perceived and treated as human beings and human beings were recognized as integral parts of the social organism. (Ceplair, 1991:189)
Among her hundreds short stories published in various magazines, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the most anthologized one nowadays. In this novella, she wrote her own experience when she suffered from postpartum depression. She criticized the male doctor who prescribed the sick narrator rest cure that apparently by the end of the story led the narrator to the edge of insanity. In another short story entitled “Dr. Clair’s Place”, Gilman expressed her idea about the similar situation in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, only in “Dr. Clair’s Place” it had a female doctor who believed that people who suffered from nervous breakdown would recover soon by making them busy, doing things they liked, such as listening to music, working, etc. This is to attack the male doctor’s bed-rest medication for people who suffer from nervous breakdown.
Forty-three of Gilman’s 186 short stories have been compiled in at least two major collections, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Other Stories, edited by Robert Shulman and The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, edited by Ann J. Lane. These short stories originally appeared in such varied popular magazines as Saturday Evening Post and Harpers' Bazaar. http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/CPGguide. html.
Besides short stories, Gilman wrote approximately 490 poems, some of which were collected in In This Our World in 1893 and in Suffrage Songs and Verses in 1911. http://www.womenwriters.net/ domesticgoddess/CPG guide.html.
Some novels Gilman wrote had utopian theme, such as Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916). In those three utopian novels, Gilman described societies in which attitudes toward women and their abilities have radically changed. Critics said that in Herland, Gilman used satire very well. The novel challenged accepted images of women by describing the reactions of three American males who entered Herland, an all-female society that reproduced through parthenogenesis, reproduction by the development of an unfertilized ovum, as in certain insects and algae. All inhabitants in Herland were described capable in doing anything, not dependent on men at all. http://www.gale.com/free_resources/ whm/bio/gilman_c.htm
Besides writing short stories, poems, and novels, Gilman also wrote a thousand works of non-fiction. These appeared in such magazines as Woman's Journal, Housekeeper's Weekly, Impress, Cosmopolitan, New Nation, The New York Times, and The Saturday Evening Post, to name only a fraction, and their topics reflect Charlotte’s interest in everything from chewing gum in public to socialism. Some of her non-fiction work has been collected in Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Non-Fiction Reader (1991) and Her Progress Towards Utopia: With Selected Writings (1994). http://www.Womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/CPGguide.html. Since her main concern was to make a change in women’s lives, many of her articles urged women to break out of the restrictions society enforces upon them in order to advance social evolution as a mechanism for change. She demanded that women work in "crafts, trades, arts and sciences," fields from which they had historically been barred, and not in the home, their traditional "separate sphere." Indeed, the home is resoundingly absent from her list of occupations, for it, too, needs restructuring in evolutionary advancement.
In “Parasitism and Civilized Vice” Gilman employs her anti-Freudian diatribe against sex-expression and all forms of egocentric excess in the cause of advancing her social philosophy of race development. This essay—published in a collection of other socialist pieces entitled Woman’s Coming of Age (1931)—details Gilman’s argument against women’s growing dependence on men in capitalist America. Gilman argued that like harem women, who were fed and protected for sex service, American women were becoming “sex parasites”. Sex has become a process of economic exchange instead of race betterment, leading to greater temptation for men (Bauer, 1998:25). In another article entitled “Think Husbands Aren’t Mainstays” appearing in New York Times in 1909, Gilman declared that wives were “unpaid servants, merely a comfort and a luxury agreeable to have if a man can afford it” (Bauer, 1998:23).
Gilman also wrote some non-fiction books. In Women and Economics (1898)—her most well-known book which has been translated into several language since its first publication—Gilman argued that the home, considered as both a social and an economic entity, represented the single greatest obstacle to a realization of humanity’s collective interests, since it fosters an elaborate devotion to individuals and their personal needs. Following John Stuart Mill’s and Harriet Taylor’s line in The Subjection of Women (1869) and Friedrich Engels’s analogy between slavery and marriage in The Origin of the Family, Gilman drew the comparison between marriage and prostitution. In an era when purity campaigns and female reform societies were at the height of their influence, Gilman characterized prostitution as, at least in one sense, a lesser evil than marriage. In both cases, “the female gets her food from the male by virtue of her sex-relationship”, but in marriage the “evil” is compounded by a “perfect acceptance of the situation”. (Bauer, 1998:23)
In The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903), Gilman argued that the exclusion which characterized the domestic sphere had rendered women inferior. The Home began with the premise that “whosoever, man or woman, lived always in a small dark place, was always guarded, protected, directed, and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it”. Gilman argued that it was not that the values of the home need to reach into industry but that principles of industry need to be applied to the home, thereby professionalizing women’s work. Adamantly rejecting the claims certain of her contemporaries known as “female feminists” made for the innately different but superior contributions represented by women’s influence in the home, Gilman concluded that exclusion was always and only oppressive (Bauer, 1998:23-24).
In The Man-Made World or, Our Androcentric Culture (1911), Gilman criticized “androcentric culture”, cataloging the ills that have accumulated as a result of what she sees as an unhealthy move from earlier matriarchal communities to patriarchal society. First, beauty and health have been retarded and both men and women have become weak, inefficient, and ill, not to mention victims of fashion. What is considered beautiful in women is only sex ornament. Second, the sexual double standard has weakened the race by resulting in the transmission of sexual diseases. Third, women’s “civilized art sense” has been aborted since they have not learned “applied art”—in creativity—but only fashion and fad; finally literature “has not only given any true picture of woman’s life, very little of human life, and a disproportioned section of man’s life” (Bauer, 1998:24)
In Concerning Children (1900) Gilman advocated professional child-care. She delivered her most extensive critique of traditional forms of raising children, by discipline and obedience, and called for the creation of process and environment that encouraged them to think. Gilman argued that race improvement must be made between the years fifteen and twenty-five—“the most important decade of a lifetime,” since those were the years when a person could acquire “a keen new consciousness of personal responsibility” and then transmit that characteristic to his or her children. (Ceplair, 1991:91)
Despite the fact that she wrote a lot of articles to educate women about their equal position to men in the patriarchal society, Gilman did not label herself as a feminist, not because she lacked sympathy for feminism but because she found ‘its objectives too limited for her own more radical views on the need for social change’ (Goodman, 2001:140). In her era, the sole goal of women’s movement was to get right to vote in general election to show that they were equal to men. For Gilman, to be politically equal was not as important as economically independent. Work was the most important aspect for women to be equal. When a woman was economically independent, she could do anything in her life, to make herself in the same rank as a man. As a writer and an activist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman offered a great many ideas to the public of her time. She allowed women to dream of a life of equality, and men of a world where women helped out in the workforce. Through her writing and speaking engagements she helped push women's roles in society further than they had ever been. A visionary of her time, she showed people that a world where women were prevalent in the working class was possible with some effort. Through thoughts of economic, political and social independence, she put a picture to equality. http:// bizntech.rutgers.edu/worknlit/gilman2_bib.html
Furthermore, in her Afterword of “The Yellow Wallpaper” Feminist Press Edition (1973), Elaine Hedges stated that Gilman’s basic tenet in her writings and lectures was that work must be respected. Women must be admitted into the human work world on equal terms with men. The domestic work they do must be respected, and they must be free to do other kinds of work as well. Gilman believed in continuing human progress (she wrote a utopian novel, Moving the Mountain, in which women had achieved true equality with men), and she saw the situation of women in the nineteenth century as thwarting this progress as well as thwarting their own development. For some human beings to be classified as horses, or cows, or sexual objects, was to impoverish not only themselves but human society as a whole. (via Golden, 1992:134)
In her lecturing career, Gilman gave lectures to middle— to upper-middle class women’s clubs, labor unions, women’s suffrage groups, church congregations, and Nationalist clubs http://employment.education.uiowa.edu/lalowe/034_201_e Portfolio/ GILMAN_PAPER.htm She spent the rest of 1890s traveling and lecturing: attending a suffrage convention in Washington in 1896; going to England in July 1896 to the Internationalist Socialist and Labor Congress; and again to the International Women’s Congress in London in 1899. She attended the International Congress of Women in Berlin in 1904 and the International Woman Suffrage Congress in Budapest in 1913, and made a lecture tour of England, Holland, Germany, Australia, and Hungary in 1905. http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/ sch00019.html Gilman did all those travels and lectures to express her idea in order to evoke about gender (in)equality and encourage women to struggle for a better and equal life in patriarchal society.

I assume that before we condemn someone to do things you consider heartless—especially in this case a woman who seems not to follow feminine roles CONSTRUCTED BY MEN IN PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY: a loving mother, a loyal and submissive wife, a caring friend, a feminine creature, make sure that you find out the background of her to be like that. If you dont want to bother yourself to do such a ‘research’, just shut your mouth up.
PT56 08.14 171106

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER ~ A Mirror of Middle Class Women

“THE YELLOW WALLPAPER” – A MIRROR OF UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS WOMEN’S CONDITION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA

Abstract 

This study is intended to examine Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s rebellious minds against social and patriarchal authorities as reflected in her novella entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper”. This study is conducted under a library research and concentrates on reference source related to the topic discussed. It is based on an interpretation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s rebellious minds, as a radical feminist among her contemporary nineteenth century social thinkers. 

Tremaine McDowell’s American Studies theory is used here; that is the reconciliation of tenses (past, present, future), and the reconciliation of academic disciplines that are sociohistorical approach, cultural approach, historical contexts of the writer, and literary approaches—feminist literary criticism and genetic structuralism.

The result of the study finds out that male dominated society that tends to oppress women’s lives under its norm called the Cult of True Womanhood caused another cult—the Cult of Female Invalidism. These two kinds of cult engendered woman’s madness phenomenon.

Keywords: the Cult of True Womanhood, women’s oppression, woman’s madness

INTRODUCTION

That patriarchal culture has existed for ages and always given privileges toward men is already well-known. Many articles have discussed this topic too. However, that this patriarchal culture then also decides who is sane who is insane has not been popularly discussed yet. In her book, Women and Madness (1972), Phyllis Chesler, proposes an idea that because the mental health system is patriarchal, women are often falsely labeled as being ‘mad’ if they do not conform to stereotypical feminine roles.

Having the dominant position in society, men decide the feminine roles women are supposed to have. In the nineteenth century America, society created an ideological prison for women that were called the Cult of True Womanhood. To strengthen this norm, many books, magazines, or journal that are popularly known as Conduct Literature were abundantly published. When women did not conform to the norms of this Cult of True Womanhood, they would be easily deemed mad.

The objective of this study is to find out that this norm created by patriarchal society oppresses women’s lives. To some extent, it increased the number of women who were labeled mad because they chose to deviate the norm. As mental evidence, the novella entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is chosen.

This study is carried out under the American Studies theory proposed by Tremaine McDowell—the reconciliation of tenses (past, present, and future), and the reconciliation of academic disciplines that is interdisciplinary approach (82). This interdisciplinary approach comprises sociohistorical approach, cultural approach, historical contexts of the writer and literary approaches, namely genetic structuralism and feminist literary criticism.

The method applied in this study is library research. It means, it concentrates on reference source related to the topic discussed. Besides the novella itself, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s other books are utilized. Some other books and online references closely linked to the study are of big help to conduct the research.

ANALYSIS

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story telling about a young woman who is eventually driven mad by the society. The narrator is apparently confused with the norm defining “true” and “good” woman constructed by society dominated by man.

Upper and middle-class women in that era mostly had a role as their husband’s ornament, the angel of the house. With the emergence of middle-class society due to the Industrial Revolution, many new rich men wanted to show off their valuable “treasure”; a wife that is passive, obedient, beautiful, submissive, pious, and pure. This beautiful-to-be-looked role of a wife is similar to that of wallpaper.

Gilman herself as the writer said in “Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?” that “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written to attack the wrong rest cure proposed by Dr. S. W. Mitchell for women who were considered to suffer from mental illness. At the same time, the story also turns out to be one way of Gilman to criticize her male-dominated society’s way to oppress women during her era. Imposing “true” and “good” woman norm to all women obviously engendered women’s madness phenomenon in that era.

The Cult of True Womanhood

The Cult of True Womanhood consists of four attributes; namely piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. (The Cult of True Womanhood). In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, two attributes—submissiveness and domesticity—were clearly seen.

In the beginning of the story, the narrator was taken to a solitary mansion to undergo treatment. The narrator’s husband named John who happened to be a high standing physician diagnosed her to suffer from temporary nervous depression. To cure that kind of depression, a woman had to undergo an isolated rest cure.

In that isolated place, the narrator was not allowed to go anywhere, but stayed in her yellow-wallpapered room. She was somewhat imprisoned there. She had to be domesticated while her husband could go out of the house to do his job to his heart’s content, even sometimes he was away for days. It showed dichotomy of public sphere and domestic sphere for men and women. He enjoyed mobility where he could gain his identity to enhance his position in society, while at the same time he showed his authority toward his wife, the mentally disturbed wife. As someone who had the most professional profession in that era—physician—the husband showed that whatever he said is right, his prescription to cure his wife—to isolate her in a solitary place—was the best for her. This was undebatable.

To convince the narrator, the husband said they went to that isolated place only on her account so that she could get perfect rest. The loving nicks her husband used in calling her—my dear, darling, blessed little goose—gave the narrator feeling that her husband loved and cared for her much. The imposing of the true womanhood norm on upper and middle-class women, the loving feeling her husband tried to evoke in her using loving nicks and the condition that the narrator was suffering from temporary depression made her not able to debate her husband.

Referring to the third characteristic of the Cult of True Womanhood—submissiveness—where true feminine genius was supposed to be timid, doubtful, clingingly dependent, and a perpetual childhood, the narrator was treated as a child. She was ‘imprisoned’ in a room where the windows were barred for about three months. It showed that she was legally a child; socially and economically she must be led by an adult—her husband. Therefore, the nursery was an appropriate place to house her.

In a patriarchal society, relationship between a husband and a wife was similar to a relationship between a parent and a child. A parent had a right to say things and a child had an obligation to listen and to do what the parent said. A child was not supposed to disagree. The child must submit him or herself to the parent. It made the child dependent on the parent.

It can be seen clearly that the husband treated his wife as a child. He called her his “blessed little goose” (Bauer, 1998:44), and “little girl” (Bauer, 1998:50). When the narrator tried to tell him what she thought was good for her, but not appropriate to the husband’s opinion, the husband used sweet words to force his idea toward the wife.

“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! … Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?” (Bauer, 1998:51)

As socially dependent on her husband, the narrator let her husband take care of things for her, for example, to choose to stay in such a solitary place where she did not need to socialize with neighbors because John thought that the narrator needed a full rest and she did not need to get along with people. Since the narrator suffered from a mental disturbance, John, asked his sister, Jennie, to take care of the rented house so that the narrator did not need to do anything. She only needed to take care of herself.

When John thought that the narrator was in a mentally good condition that enabled her to need company, he chose some certain people to come to visit them. That illustration shows how John controlled the narrator’s social life. He decided where they stayed when he thought that his wife needed time to cure her mental depression. He decided with whom the narrator got along, who could stay there with them, what she had better do during their three-month stay—only to take care of herself.

As economically dependent on her husband, the narrator did not need to work either. Moreover, in her mentally depressed situation, John forbade her to “work” until she was well again. While she herself thought that congenial work, with excitement and change would do her good. The narrator instinctively felt that only her work could transport her out of the world of childhood. Surely, her craving to write—meaning to work here—endangered her husband’s position as an authority. He would not have control any longer toward the narrator—his wife.

Living in an era where people worshipped the Cult of True Womanhood, Gilman wrote that novella to criticize the situation, the husband was the authoritarian, and the wife was the submissive. It is clearly seen when she illustrated the situation where the husband forbade the narrator to write and the narrator had to do it in secret. By questioning, “What is one to do?” Gilman wanted to expose the weak position of the narrator. She could just follow what her husband said to her, believe in things he thought, and not what she thought. Since she was considered as a child, not mature yet, she did not have any choice but to agree with whatever her husband asked her to do.

Another important thing in the Cult of True Womanhood is novel reading prohibition. The word ‘novel’ in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary means ‘new and not resembling something formerly known or used’ (2003:849). It is known that novel is a new kind of literary work, compared to poetry. Industrial revolution of the nineteenth century America produced middle-class society. Novel was mostly produced by this middle-class society.

Industrial Revolution produced new rich people that then were considered the middle class society. These new rich people absolutely had different taste from old rich people. When old rich people loved reading poetry—an established literary genre at that time, the new rich people could not do the same thing due to the different taste. Poetry was considered too high for them. They could not enjoy reading it because they could not understand it. However, they needed to read something. Novel was the best solution because novel did not use ‘high’ and complicated (connotative) words.

One of novel’s characteristics is being critical toward government and society’s norm. As Literary World observed in 1850, “The novel is now almost recognized with the newspaper and the pamphlet as a legitimate mode of influencing public opinion” because of its “strong, emotional, political, and cultural agendas for change” (via Herndl, 1993:45) Society (read  men) were worried if reading novel would make women critical about their so-called destined role as a domestic creature. When women became critical, men suspected that those women would question their ‘natural’ characteristics as mentioned in the Cult of True Womanhood. It would endanger their position as the only owner of the public sphere. When women wanted to get involved in public affairs too, they would compete with men. Besides, if both men and women were busy in public sphere, who would worship God? As a pious country with its Puritanism before the nineteenth century, American men put their forebear’s religious values on women’s shoulder. Therefore they created the Cult of True Womanhood norm to confine women.

If novel reading is prohibited, it is understandable, then, if writing is much more condemned. Because the narrator was still undergoing treatment for her mental disturbance, she was not allowed to do anything but rest herself, rest her body as well as rest her mind. The narrator had to write her journal secretly, when nobody was around her. She herself thought that she needed to write. “Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Bauer, 1998:42) and “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.” (Bauer, 1998:46) However she was not free to do that. The narrator wrote in her journal what her husband said about her eagerness to write

… with my imaginative power and habit of story making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. (Bauer, 1998:46)

Every time she wrote in her journal, she had to stop herself when her husband arrived, “There comes John, and I must put this away, --he hates to have me write a word.” (Bauer, 1998:44) or when she saw Jennie coming to her. “There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.” (Bauer, 1998:47) It can be understood then if that kind of life tired her. She really wanted to do one thing she likes—writing, and she perceived that by writing she could express herself well and it even could help her cure herself. However, she could not do that freely, because her rest-cure treatment prohibited her to do that. And as a true woman, she had to obey what her husband said to her.

The narrator’s deteriorating mental breakdown was understandable. She could not be the woman she was because of the standards set by society at that time. Her husband did not appreciate her creativity and thought. She was not entrusted to do anything or make any decision for herself. While the narrator herself was illustrated as a woman who wanted to conform society’s norm; belittling her own ideas and respecting her husband’s.

Social expectations in the decade of the first half of the nineteenth century encouraged a kind of selflessness that could have resulted in a woman’s thinking of herself as nothing, or less than nothing. This is what can be seen in “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal background in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper”

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is often considered as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s semi-autobiographical short story since she mentioned Mitchell’s name in it to acknowledge the autobiographical roots. Besides mentioning that noted neurologist’s name, “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.” (Bauer, 1998:47) the story also contains an obvious similarity between the narrator’s problem and Gilman’s. As stated before, this novella tells about a woman who suffers from a postpartum depression. Gilman herself also experienced that in her first marriage with Charles Walter Stetson.

During her childhood, Charlotte had a loveless relationship with her mother who never showed her care and love toward her children, Charlotte and her brother Thomas. It happened after her husband left her, because the doctor forbade her to get pregnant again. Charlotte wrote in her autobiography about her mother, “After her idolized youth, she was left neglected. After her flood of lovers, she became a deserted wife” (via Golden, 1992:212).

She saw her mother—a woman whom she described as someone who had passionate feeling for being a domestic wife—live in suffering. Her mother’s suffering made her also live unhappily due to lack of parental love. In Charlotte’s eyes, her mother became a victim as well as a victimizer. This bitter experience made her doubtful to get married because after getting married, a couple would have sex that would probably result in pregnancy. Having a baby was something unpleasant for Charlotte because she was afraid if she could not love her baby well, just like her own experience with her mother. In Concerning Children, Charlotte wrote that the act of childbirth evoked the fear of mutilation, motherhood was the ultimate human sacrifice. Once a woman became a mother, she had to sacrifice all her life for the child, for the family, and she could not have her own life (via Golden, 1992:218). Therefore, the emotions Charlotte felt when she gave birth were appropriate for a funeral. Instead of welcoming the baby happily, she went into a period of mourning.

Not wanting to do her mother’s mistake that causes three of them (Charlotte, her mother, and her brother) to live in suffering—to get married and to have children—but thinking that a woman was supposed to get married following the nineteenth century’s society’s norm, Charlotte was in a big dilemma when Charles proposed her. She was afraid if marriage and motherhood might incapacitate her for her work in the world. After considering Charles’ repeated proposal for some time, Charlotte married him.

Her fears for marriage and motherhood soon made her suffer from postpartum depression after delivering her baby one year after that. She could no longer do her intellectual activity, such as writing and painting due to the breakdown. Wanting to be cured to continue doing her intellectual work, Charlotte visited the most noted neurologist at that time, S. Weir Mitchell.

Mitchell was well known for his rest cure treatment when he handled mentally breakdown patients, both men and women. He also prescribed the same treatment toward Charlotte. He suggested Charlotte to avoid doing her intellectual life. She was supposed to lead a passive life instead because Mitchell believed that her intellectual work was the cause of Charlotte’s depression. Mitchell—as other physicians at that time—believed that women’s reproductive organs in their bodies hindered them from doing things intellectually. The capacity of women’s brain was not as good as men’s to get knowledge. (Golden, 1992: 97-100) Therefore, women were not supposed to have intellectual ambition in their life. When a woman forced to have it, she was condemned to suffer from mental illness.

Charlotte wrote this personal experience in her novella entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The narrator suffered from postpartum depression after delivering a baby. It was clearly seen that she was not ready to be a mother. Only because she was married and consequently had sex with her husband did she become pregnant and then become a mother. Here, Charlotte illustrated her idea that childbirth meant the death of the mother.

The novella tells that the narrator was not ready to have motherly and wifely chores. To cure her mental depression, her husband took her to a summer vacation house for rest therapy. As Mitchell, John—the narrator’s husband—also asked her not to involve herself with intellectual activity—writing. To substitute her to do motherly and wifely chores, John invited a woman named Mary to be the nanny of their baby, and his own sister, Jennie, to be the housekeeper.

The narrator was asked to stay home all day long while her husband was free to pursue his career to be high standing physician. The narrator followed her husband’s suggestion and tried to make herself busy in that rented house. She let her husband go away and busy with his own job that sometimes made him away for some nights.

On the contrary, in Charlotte’s real life, after marrying Charles, she still continued her career by writing and painting. She still used her maiden name as Charlotte Anna Perkins, and not as Mrs. Charles Walter Stetson. It hurt Charles’s pride. Living in a male-dominated society, a married woman was not supposed to have her own identity. She had to bear her husband’s family name.

In handling her mental disturbance, Charlotte realized that Mitchell’s rest cure prescription did not do her any good. In The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903), Charlotte proposed her idea that mother’s world symbolized death and martyrdom, while father’s world promised work, achievement, and power (via Ceplair, 1991:124-144). Mitchell’s paternalistic therapy locked her into the mother’s role, and at the same time, it deprived her of the opportunity to pursue her father’s achievements and thus blocked her life. Therefore, she stopped it. She resumed her intellectual life instead. She started writing again, while at the same time also traveling around America to give lectures about women’s rights. She was successful to cure herself by working, and not by having a passive life.

In this case, Charlotte wrote different thing from her own experience, because, as she wrote in “Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?” she wanted to criticize Mitchell’s rest cure prescription and also to attack the Cult of True Womanhood.

To show Mitchell that he gave a wrong prescription for women who suffered from hysteria, Charlotte finished her story by leading the narrator to insanity. The message was clear, mentally ill women needed to work to cure themselves, and not on the way around. In “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?” Charlotte wrote that she sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad.

But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. (via Bauer, 1998:349)

She also showed society that this depressed narrator became insane because she was forced to be domestic and submissive toward her husband. Not all women shared the same idea to enjoy being domestic and submissive. For intellectual and ambitious women, just like Charlotte and her heroine in “The Yellow Wallpaper” it was a very difficult thing to conform to the tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood.

Although Charlotte refused to be called feminist during her lifetime, the twentieth and twenty first century critics crown her as radical feminist theorist. She saw that what feminists struggled to get—right to vote—to be equal to men was not enough. Right to vote only was not enough to make women’s position equal to men. Based on her personal life, Charlotte had her genuine ideas about marriage and motherhood. The inequality between men and women in a marriage was caused by women’s finance dependence on their husbands, like what she wrote in her most famous book entitled Women and Economics

Her living, all that she gets—food, clothing, ornaments, amusements, luxuries—these bear no relation to her power to produce wealth, to her services in the house, or t her motherhood. These things bear relation only to the man she marries, the man she depends on—to how much he has and how much he is willing to give her. (via Bauer, 1998:325)

It is clearly seen in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the unequal relationship between the narrator and her husband was caused by economics, John worked as “high standing” physician while the narrator was “imprisoned” in her room. Charlotte’s intentional choice of physician as the narrator’s husband’s profession had some reasons to show the sharp inequality between the narrator and the husband. First, the husband earned much money because physician was the most professional profession in that era. When it was compared to his idle wife, it showed high financial dependence on the part of the wife. Second, physician as the most respected and scientific profession dictated people to always believe in what a physician said. In the middle of the cult of science of the enlightenment in the eighteenth century, doctors really had a say to shape people’s way of thinking among “rational” society.

The financial dependence of the wife on the husband was similar to a child’s dependence on his or her parents. In Concerning Children, Charlotte criticized parents-children relationship that obliged children to obey their parents.

…obedience has a bad effect on the growing mind. A child is human creature. He should be reared with a view to his development and behavior as an adult, not solely with a view to his behavior as a child. … The work of “parenthood” is not only to guard and nourish the young, but to develop the qualities needed in the mature. (via Ceplair, 1991:117)

In the story, Charlotte illustrated the relationship between the narrator and John, her husband, was similar to that between a parent and a kid, e.g. the way John called his wife, “little girl”. A child was considered not knowing what was good or bad for him or herself. A child always needed parents’ guidance. Sometimes more extremely, parents dictated what the child had to do, and the kid just listened and did what the parents said. Every time the narrator tried to express her ideas to the husband, he always belittled her.

The difference between husband-wife relationship and parents-children relationship with the financial dependence as a result was that the wife served the husband in bed and did the household chores, while a child had to pay back the parent’s financial support by obeying whatever the parents said and asked the child to do. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator paid her husband back both by serving him in bed and obeying whatever John said. Her inability to do household chores was understandable because she suffered from mental disturbance. The presence of Mary and Jennie represented the narrator’s domestic side.

Woman’s Madness in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

As stated in the introduction that that feminist critics propose an idea that woman’s madness is spurred by patriarchal society, this sub chapter will show how John—the narrator’s husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper”—as the representative of patriarchal society leads his wife into insanity.

When the first time the narrator and her husband arrived in the solitary summer mansion, the narrator sensed something peculiar about the house. She wrote in her journal

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I would proudly declare that there is something queer about it. (Bauer, 1998:41)

However, when she told her husband about what she perceived—that the house was haunted—her husband laughed at her idea. This laughter shows that he underestimated his wife. Her suspicion was caused by her curiosity how such a big building like that was untenanted for so long and rented to them very cheaply. This physician-husband was described as someone who “has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Bauer, 1998:41). As someone who had the most “scientific” profession in the nineteenth century, obviously he believed only in logical things, and he considered his wife’s superstition as something illogical.

It definitely discouraged the narrator. She even suspected that because of the fact that her husband was a physician, who imposed his prescription to his patient, and did not pay attention to what the patient said and thought, she did not get well faster. “John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.” (Bauer, 1998:41)

When using what Luce Irigaray stated in Speculum of the Other Woman that a woman is defined as mad because her self expression is different from what men define for her, one can conclude that the narrator had her own way of thinking about herself which was different from her husband’s. This different way to see things between the husband and the wife urged madness phenomenon on the woman’s side.

Her sentence in her journal stating “You see he does not believe I’m sick!” (Bauer, 1998:41) shows that she thought she was sick, while her husband did not think that way. He just thought that there was really nothing the matter and the narrator only had “temporary nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency” (Bauer, 1998:42).

Since the most famous treatment for women suspected to suffer from hysteria at that time was rest cure with its solitary confinement and avoiding intellectual stimulation, the husband brought his wife to that isolated place. He prohibited his wife to socialize with other people without his knowing, and he did not let her write in her journal. While on the contrary, the narrator believed in something contradictory, “Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change would do me good.” (Bauer, 1998:42) The husband, with his authoritarian position and sanity decided that his wife’s writing in her journal would make her depression worse so that he asked her to stop writing and stop having “illusion” about the house. In the husband’s eyes, that the house was haunted was only his wife’s illusion. On the other hand, for her, it was a fact. In her journal, she wrote the reasons why she thought that way—the house was untenanted for so long and rented cheaply.

Furthermore, she wrote:

I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. (Bauer, 1998:42)

The above quotation showed the contradictory ways of thinking between John and the narrator. She opined that probably she would be recovered soon if she socialized more with people and got stimulus. However, her husband eliminates that idea by telling her to stop thinking about her condition—to be confined in a solitary place, to perceive that the house was haunted, and his prohibition to write in her journal.

John said that they came to that house merely on the narrator’s account so that she would get better soon. However, he ignored what his wife wanted. He denied her request a room on the first floor with access to the air outside, and confined her in the attic instead. When the narrator felt troubled with the wallpaper and asked her husband to change it, he said that he would even whitewash the cellar if the narrator asked him to do it. However, he did not do anything about it. He went on forcing his wife not to give fancy toward the wallpaper and the house.

The husband encouraged her to exercise “self-control” and avoid expressing negative thoughts and fears about her illness; she is also urged to keep her fancies and superstitions in check. In other words, it can be said that the husband defined what was sanity to his wife, and what his wife felt and thought as insanity. Sanity for a woman was that she had to believe in and agree with what her husband said; she had to be quiet, selfless, and submissive. On the other hand, when a woman had her own feeling and thought that opposed to her husband’s, it was insanity.

The husband kept telling her that all he did was for her benefit, because he loved her. Troubled with the idea of “true woman” and believing in what her husband said to her, the writer wrote in her journal “He is very careful and loving” (Bauer, 1998:43) and “He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick.” (Bauer, 1998:49). However, it is obviously seen that what he did toward his wife did not show his loving character. It even showed his egotism and arrogance. He was not empathetic. He never listened to what his wife said and wanted. His imposing his wife to believe in what he said to her and asked her to do what he thought the best for his wife even made his wife’s depression worsened quickly.

The explanation above shows Luce Irigaray’s theory about the cause of woman’s madness is right. Woman’s madness’ phenomenon is triggered by the different way to view problems or things in this life between man and woman. Since this is a male-dominated world, men decide that their views are right and sane while they consider women’s views as wrong and insane.

Referring to Helene Cioux’s theory about woman’s madness— society sees a mad woman as a courageous figure refusing to accept masculine norms, it can be proven in the way the narrator’s courageous critical idea that housekeeper is the best profession for women. In her journal, commenting on Jennie, her sister-in-law, the narrator wrote, “She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (Bauer, 1998:47). She compared it to her writing journal that she considered as her work. She realized that the best profession for women in that era was homemaker, according to the Cult of True Womanhood. But still, she criticized it. Besides that, she also knew that she opposed the society norm that condemned novel writing. She kept on writing her journal. She wrote, “I verily believe she (Jennie) thinks it is the writing which made me sick!” (Bauer, 1998:47) Apparently she did not believe that the writing made her sick. She even thought of on the way around, writing could help her release her stress. She did not really pay attention to any norm confining women to be “true” and “good”. She did what she believed good for her. She continued writing, kept perceiving that there was something wrong with the house. She did not try her best to conform to the society’s norm to be a “good” mother for the baby she just delivered, and she did not have any idea either to be a “good” wife. She also kept thinking that she was sick despite her husband’s saying that she was not.

As a result of her courage to refuse the norm was that people around her labeled her mad.

A little bit different from the theories proposed by Luce Irigaray and Helene Cioux, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that the nineteenth century norms for women’s behavior—selflessness and submissiveness—were the causes of women’s mental illness. Charlotte Perkins Gilman apparently illustrated her nameless narrator as an intelligent and energetic woman who would feel restless if she had to live a boring life, without intellectual challenges as a housewife.

Since the beginning of the story, John always tried to make his wife as a submissive and selfless wife. He designed a treatment to pressure the narrator into concluding that something was wrong with her, not with her husband nor the people around her nor the values people adhered at that time. When she tried to be assertive, to express her feelings and thought toward her husband, he cruelly asked her to control herself. “… so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.” (Bauer, 1998:43) By “proper self-control”, John meant to control the possibility that the narrator had her own version about her sickness and decide her own treatment to cure herself. By controlling her, John forced her to do what he told her instead.

In her book Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler proposes the similar theories. As stated in Chapter three, Chesler’s first theory is that women who exhibit traditionally “male” traits are often diagnosed as mentally ill. The narrator’s traits—such as self-assertiveness—emphasized this. She did what she thought right and good for her. Telling her husband that the house had something peculiar and keeping thinking of it though her husband asked her to forget that idea is one example. The event when her husband forced her to stay in the room upstairs and she asked him to move downstairs because she did not feel comfortable in that room shows that she tried to be assertive, to have her own way of thinking. Being self-assertive was considered as men’s traits because women in that era were supposed to be selfless and obedient.

Chesler’s second theory is that mentally ill women are less likely to get understanding and support from family, friends, or employers and co-workers. None of the people around the narrator—especially John and Jennie—showed their understanding and support to her. John did not pay attention to what she said. He did not do what his wife asked him to do. The narrator’s statement in her journal “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work” (Bauer, 1998:46) shows her complaint. In that era, men did not consider their wives as companion—meaning having equal position with them. Women were just the “second sex”. Wives were just the angels of the house, the ornament for their husbands. Wives were just breeders and cooks. Charlotte criticized this situation by writing in her autobiography that women in that era were just “The ‘charmer’ before marriage and the cook afterward” (via Bauer, 1998:337).

John did not show sympathy toward his wife. The narrator had to write her journal—something that gave her comfort and relief—behind his back because she was worried if her husband would take away her freedom to write. She did not find anyone to share this enjoyment. No one understood her.

Jennie who thought that housekeeper was the best profession for women often looked at the narrator oddly. Jennie did not understand why the narrator did not conform to the society’s norms. If John represented the oppressive males in society, Jennie represented all the women who were ignorant of society’s oppression toward women. Jennie believed that women were created to be inferior and men superior.

Chesler’s idea that social change is needed to eliminate mental illness caused by oppressive patriarchy is supported by Gilman’s writing “The Yellow Wallpaper”. She wrote it to indirectly tell S. W. Mitchell that his rest-cure prescription was wrong. Recent feminist critics see it as Gilman’s struggle to criticize that patriarchal society with its idea about “good” and “true” woman oppresses women’s life. Forcing all women to be “true” and “good” women without giving any space to women who do not share the same idea to be such persons is not a wise thing. It even leads women to insanity.

CONCLUSION

Based on the analysis in the previous chapter, it can be said that there is a very strong relationship between what is going on in society and a theme of literary work. The Cult of True Womanhood strongly affects women’s lives in the nineteenth century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrays it in her novella entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892).

The analysis shows that women are divided into two categories. The first, woman who believes that she is born as a weaker sex or as the second sex. It is represented by Jennie; the sister-in-law of the nameless narrator. This kind of woman supports the status quo of patriarchal society. The second category is woman who becomes the victim of such culture. The imposing practice of patriarchal culture with its true womanhood norm on all women is obviously harmful to intelligent and creative women. This second category of woman is represented by the narrator.

As a victim of such culture, Gilman writes “The Yellow Wallpaper” to attack the practice of the Cult of True Womanhood. Such culture really oppresses intelligent and ambitious women like Gilman herself. The forced practice of that culture then triggers woman’s madness phenomenon.

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