THE IDEA THAT STUCK- THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gill documenting a woman's descent into madness at the hands of her controlling husband and physician. A semi-autobiographical commentary on the treatment of woman in a patriarchal society, the yellow wallpaper was first published in The New England Magazine and paved the way for future feminist writers such as Sylvia Plath (you can see the direct inspiration from the yellow wallpaper in Sylvia Plath's novel 'The Bell Jar'). In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman uses a first person narrative to demonstrate the illusion her husband has her under- the illusion of care and of love- which symbolizes her view on the illusion of equality society expected women to believe in a time when women had supposedly been granted full equality with the right to vote but were still seen as less than their male counterparts in most social positions.

I was introduced to the story of The Yellow Wallpaper a year or so ago when reading The Bell Jar and i was blown away by its accurate portrayal of the frustration of being a misunderstood woman. Having been put on anti-depressants the week we were introduced to this project, i was feeling very unstable during this project as i hadn't settled into taking new medication and i channeled that weird feeling that i felt like no one understood into this project as i felt i related to the woman in the story (probably more than i would like to admit).

I chose to do my 'Scale and Illusion' project on 'The Yellow Wallpaper' because of how well the story fits into the theme of illusion- not only with the physical delusions of the main character in the story, but also with the wider themes of social illusion and the commentaries about the everlasting mistreatment of women in society- a subject i am very passionate about.

My first step was to brainstorm how i was going to realize my idea, i wanted my work to also fit the 'scale' part of 'Scale and Illusion' so i decided to create a scene from the yellow wallpaper. As the majority of the story is set in the couples bedroom (the room with the yellow wallpaper), i decided to create a miniature version of this room, using cardboard and other found materials (we were encouraged to make our works as eco friendly as possible so almost all of my materials were found). I began by finding a copy of the yellow wallpaper online that i could use as a reference- unfortunately a friend of mine has my copy- and highlighting all the sections that describe the wallpaper itself or the room i was creating. Once i finished this, i began to paint the yellow wallpaper itself, trying as hard as i could to stay true to the story. I used images from google as references for the figures (my search history was very weird this week- 'woman crawling drawing reference', 'hanging body drawing reference'). I am very happy with how the wallpaper came out because i feel like it is how i imagined it when first reading the story, however, i really regret not finishing it- i got a bit stunted for time and decided to finish with the painting early because i got frustrated with it which means that the wallpaper is missing its fungi-like flowers that Gilman describes in her story.

SCALE AND ILLUSION

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