The Yellow Wallpaper and Desiree's Baby

Though short stories as a genre are considerably shorter than a full length novel, the manner in which we read them differs considerably and often leads to second or third readings of the text along with careful scrutiny of individual passages. This has been a particularly troublesome genre for me so far since I tend to be a fast reader. Both of our readings this week I have read through, come to the end, and thought to myself "how did that end up happening?" Short stories require much more attention to detail than do novels, which may unveil their secrets over the course of 600 pages.

Though I happen to disagree with our professor that the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper was dead the entire story, I did benefit from our reading back over of the text and the highlighting of various details that I miss the first time I read through it. What we have read in this genre so far has shown me several parallels between short stories and mystery/thriller movies; you are lead along for most of the story to believe that the plot will resolve itself in a certain manner, but at the end something completely unexpected happens yet is somehow strongly supported by what has already occurred. Both almost always require another viewing or reading, and both usually leave the audience in doubt as to whether the events they witness occurred exactly how they were described by the narrator. Earlier in the story the narrator assumes that the room must have been a nursery at some point, then towards the end exclaims “How those children did tear about here! This bedstead is fairly gnawed!” (Gilman 514). However, only 9 lines later she says that “I tried to life and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth” (Gilman 515). Was it really children who had gnawed up the bed before they came to live there? Or was it her all along? Or was it a woman who lived there previously who went through similar circumstances, such as with Sybil in A Whisper in the Dark? Because of the narrators’ psychosis at the end of the story, we cannot ever know for certain. But because of her psychosis, we are persuaded to read over the story again multiple times in order to understand how her condition developed.

Insanity always confuses things when mentioned in a story, even if it does not truly exist as in Desiree’s Baby. When Desiree realizes that her baby is part black, she is told that it means that she must be part black too. She is quick to say “ ‘It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are grey, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair,’ seizing his wrist. ‘Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand,’ she laughed hysterically” (Chopin 519). As he proceeds to throw her out we believe that she is simply crazy and in denial that she is black, with the supporting evidence that no one truly knows who her parents were since she was adopted. But in the end, we learn that it is Armand himself who is half black, and that there was nothing wrong with Desiree to begin with. Again, careful reading shows us that this is true, for example, when Desiree says that her hand is even whiter than Armand’s.

Both pieces speak out strongly against the treatment of women of the time, especially in regard to mental disorders, and both require careful reading to discern all the meaning that exists in their few short pages.