Parenting and the Narrative Imagination in Twain’s Pudd’nhead

Wilson

Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson is, in its most basic form, a

fable, one that is at once humorous and a commentary on racial

stereotypes and social divides in the pre- and post- Civil War

era. Although there are many examples of Twain’s ideas regarding

race relations to analyze, one of the more subtle and

simultaneously most effective narratives in Pudd’nhead Wilson is

the role of parenting. Twain bridges the racial and social gap

between black and white society, despite glaring differences in

social status and vernacular, by showing the reader that the

parental motives of both an African-American slave woman and

white, prominent male have the same base. As a consequence, these

very different characters are sympathetic and relatable to the

predominantly white readers of the era, constructing what Martha

Nussbaum would call the “narrative imagination” in which readers

engage with and become familiar with others through acts of

storytelling. Although this theme in Pudd’nhead Wilson has not

been studied extensively up until this point, there is is ample

evidence to support that, through the common theme of parenthood,

Twain creates a spectrum that unites seemingly opposite

characters, thereby challenging his readers to develop sympathy

and empathy in a move towards improved citizenship and better

understanding of cultural “others.”

In her book Cultivating Humanity, Nussbaum argues that

storytelling begins with a parent and a child and is the starting

point for most moral interactions and understanding among people,

especially as they grow, develop, and learn new stories (89). She

argues that children’s stories interact with readers’ “own

attempts to explain the world and their own actions in it. A

child deprived of stories is deprived, as well, of certain ways

of viewing other people” (Nussbaum 89). Therefore, the

responsibility of the writer in employing the narrative

imagination is to flesh out the experience of their characters in

order to create a story, a background, and an experience that

allows the readers to “put themselves in someone else’s shoes”

and develop a greater understanding of human experience. Through

this kind of narrative, the audience may participate in what

Diana Meyer calls “imaginative reconstruction,” an alternative

form of empathy by which “to empathize with another...is to

construct in imagination an experience resembling that of another

person” (29). Therefore, via the narrative imagination and

imaginative reconstruction, and with the understanding that,

“traditionally, the assumption has been that good fiction for

children and adolescents has a positive influence on society”

(Lukenbill 219), Pudd’nhead Wilson cultivates positive

citizenship by eliciting sympathy and compassion from its readers

towards characters that they may not otherwise be able to relate

to.

In their various roles as storytellers, authors create depth

that both complicates characters’ situations and gives readers

something to be compassionate about. In Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain

creates unique opportunities for compassion by giving authentic

voices to characters who may not otherwise have had a chance to

speak in his era: a woman, an African-American, and a pair of

Italian immigrants, to name a few. The effectiveness of this

narrative construction relies on what Christine Sylvester calls

“empathetic cooperation,” or, the way in which people become

“relationally rather than reactively autonomous with those we

have defined as unmistakably other, with those who are not inside

‘our’ community, our value system” (119). Furthermore, “empathy

enables respectful negotiations with contentious others because

we can recognize involuntary similarities across difference as

well as differences that mark independent identity” (119). In

this way, “the arts play a vital role, cultivating powers of

imagination that are essential to citizenship” (Nussbaum 85). By

creating relatable circumstances involving unfamiliar characters,

a narrative can cross social divides and open up new

possibilities for more inclusive citizenship, both socially and

legally.

It is critical to acknowledge that both Roxy, the poor and

uneducated African-American slave, and Judge Driscoll, the town

leader and First Family Virginian (F.F.V.), are set up as devoted

parental figures. Roxy makes the choice to switch Tom and

Chambers because she is trying to do what is best for her son

from her limited position as a black woman in a predominantly

white-male society, one typical to many small, southern,

slaveholding towns before the Civil War. She is terrified that

Percy Driscoll will sell her son down the river and so she

switches the two boys, hoping to secure a better fate for her

son; “oh thank de good Lord in heaven, you’s saved,” she says,

“you’s saved! – dey ain’t no man kin ever sell mammy’s po little

honey down de river now!” (Twain 16). As Myra Jehlen notes,

Roxy’s options within her social position are limited and,“given

those alternatives, her stratagem appears righteous and even

fair, despite its concomitant enslavement of the white baby.

Without condoning this but simply by focusing on Roxy and her

child, the story enlists the reader wholly on their side” (40).

Furthermore, “the subversive act that Roxy commits against white

society is no less a confirmatory one” (Carton 85), since its

necessity reiterates the oppressive divisions of race and class

in Dawson’s Landing. If this act is Roxy’s only solution, then

its inevitability promotes within the reader a reconsideration of

socially constructed divisions based on identity and the

potential impacts of these divisions on the lives of children –

both black and white, as witnessed through Tom and Chambers’

respective fates.

Importantly, although Roxy’s decisions may be morally

flawed, they come from an arguably sympathetic source. As a

parent, Roxy, and arguably most parents, make choices to provide

what they believe is best for their children. Twain cleverly

juxtaposes Roxy’s role as a parent with that of Judge Driscoll

who, along with his wife, was “very nearly happy, but not quite,

for they had no children” – that is, of course, until the Judge

adopts Tom (Twain 5). Indeed, when Wilson discusses Tom’s

adoption later with Luigi, after Tom has run into some trouble

with the law, Wilson describes Tom as the Judge’s “doll – his

baby,” and furthermore capitulates, “One must make allowances for

parental instinct,” referring to Judge Driscoll’s lenient nature

with his adoptive son (Twain 98). Twain draws parallels between

“maternal justice and patriarchal right” in order to equalize the

roles of parents in the novel in such a way that classifications

of race, gender, and class are not considered essential (Jehlen

54). Rather, the most important aspects of parenting are the

decisions parents must make given their relationship to and

understanding of society and their children’s place within that

society.

The tendency of the white and educated reader, the most

common audience in Twain’s time, might be to fault Roxy for her

choices because she is an uneducated, African American woman;

however, Twain shows his reader that Judge Driscoll’s treatment

of Tom is not any more effective in bringing him up “right” – in

fact, the Judge himself says of Tom: “He is worthless and

unworthy but it is largely my fault. He was entrusted to me by my

brother on his dying bed, and I have indulged him to his hurt,

instead of training him up severely and making a man out of him”

(Twain 72). Roxy’s actions seem extreme until the reader is made

to understand that Roxy fervently believes that what she is doing

is the best choice for her child, just as Judge Driscoll believed

that providing for every need of his adopted son was the right

choice. Roxy’s action, which may have otherwise been dismissed as

irresponsible or immoral, is thereby clothed with sympathy, as

she can now be seen through the lens of parenthood. Twain, in

constructing a story that compels narrative imagination, depends

on one parent’s compassion for the measures taken by another

parent, for the sake of good parenthood, apart from whether that

parent is actually good or not.

Parenthood crosses all social and racial lines, as most

parents would be sympathetic or compassionate toward another

parent who has made drastic and life-changing decisions for the

betterment, or attempted betterment, of his or her own child. In

the end, the tragic fates of Tom and Chambers again force the

reader to see the similarities between both characters: “Tom” is

eventually sent down the river, despite Roxy’s greatest efforts

to protect him, and “Chambers,” finally acknowledged as a white

man, is unable to join white society because he has been too

fully socialized as a black slave. Insofar as neither parent is

ultimately successful, Twain makes an important distinction

between being a good parent and being a relatable parent: neither

Judge Driscoll nor Roxy is a textbook “good parent,” since the

decisions they make apparently doom their children, but because

they are in a parental role widely understood by the late-

nineteenth-century audience, they are still able to function as

sympathetic characters. In fact, to reflect once more on

Nussbaum’s view of the role of vulnerability in eliciting

sympathy and compassion, it seems that by failing as parents,

Roxy and Judge Driscoll are even more effective in extracting the

sympathies of audiences that may fear similar parental failures.

With these considerations of the role of readership in mind,

it is important to note that women were the most active readers

of the novel during Twain’s time (Lyons 313-15), something he

surely would have known was key to popularity as a novelist.

Given this, it is interesting to consider the use of parental

roles in eliciting sympathy, presumably with the knowledge that

women, whose positions in society were primarily focused around

their roles as parents, were those also most likely to be reading

and interpreting Pudd’nhead Wilson in its novel form. To quote

James Machor, “What is meant to read as a woman...is a

significant question with a significant hermeneutical history, a

history that assumed an especially visible shape in early-

nineteenth-century America, when new methods of printing,

improved literacy, and changes in women’s social roles made

female reading an increasingly prominent activity and a pressing

topic of inquiry and discussion” (56). These facts, coupled with

the growing feminist ideologies of the late-nineteenth-century,

certainly seem significant in understanding Twain’s audience and

the potential purpose of including parental narratives in this

novel, published in 1894. Furthermore, it is important to note

that women readers of Pudd’nhead Wilson, through their

understanding of the responsibilities that come with being a

parent, were encouraged to develop sympathy towards both white

men and colored women through the text, two groups of people that

they may otherwise feel “othered” from.

In Pudd’nhead Wilson, the choices that parents make for the

good of their children are essential to Twain’s narrative and the

development of the reader’s sympathetic imagination. As M.B.W.

Culp argues, “Reading is a very personal experience, involving as

it does the perceptions, psychology, and social concerns of both

authors and readers” (qtd. in Lukenbill 226). In both fiction and

reality, parents must make choices for their children when they

are not capable of doing so themselves. Though Roxy’s choice was

not one that white society would have seen as acceptable, her

reasoning came from a place of parental concern, something that

people from many diverse roles in society could understand. As

Nussbaum notes, “It seems, then, to be beneficial for members of

a society to see themselves as bound to one another by similar

weaknesses and needs” (92). Twain would have been hard-pressed to

find many similarities between white and black society in his

time, especially in the 1830s in which Pudd’nhead was set, but

parenthood is one of the most classically universalizing themes

of humankind. Life and society could not exist without parenting

and the raising of children. Moreover, if “compassion, so

understood, promotes an accurate awareness of our common

vulnerability” (Nussbaum 91), then Twain’s use of the parental

theme is an artful way of playing on humanity’s common fear of

failing as parents, guardians, surrogate parents, etc. and

therefore leaving behind a damaged legacy.

Twain does not attempt to bridge every social gap in his

novel, nor does he attempt to equalize the races, genders, or

classes; as Nussbaum notes, “If we can easily sympathize with a

character, the invitation to do so has relatively little moral

value; the experience can too easily deteriorate into a self-

congratulatory wallowing in our own compassionate tendencies”

(98). Roxy and Judge Driscoll maintain most of their differences

despite being joined by the commonality of parenthood. Attempting

to fuse these characters in more complicated ways would have

undermined Twain’s credibility in his era and, as we see with

Pudd’nhead’s final court case, credibility is a most important

tool in swaying the opinions of an audience. An attempt to join

Roxy and Judge Driscoll on a level any more specific than

parenthood would have seemed incredible, and improbable, to

contemporary readers. By delicately juxtaposing their similar

positions without removing them from their respective social

orders, Twain is able to provide his reader with the possibility

of similarity between two extremes. As Nussbaum argues, “Literary

works are not free of the prejudices and blind spots that are

endemic to most of the political life...If we are reading and

teaching such novels with democratic ideals of equal concern and

respect in mind, we will probably come to feel that there is

something incomplete or even defective in these works” (101).

Twain maintains his realism while also allowing for there to be a

subtle social commentary in his work.

Twain’s use of the parental model has several key purposes.

For one, it allows for compassion, sympathy, and empathetic

cooperation on the part of the reader. Coupled with this

emotional value, Twain is able to minimize the significance of

race, class, and gender, focusing instead on the raising of

children and the way that society’s rules can negatively impact

children of all identities, socially constructed and otherwise.

Finally, the novel works towards molding its readers into better

citizens, an end that is only made possible through narrative

imagination and the ability to understand those who are

different. To quote Nussbaum, “To allow inside one’s mind people

who seem alien and frightening is to show a capacity for openness

and responsiveness that goes against the grain of many cultural

stereotypes of self-sufficiency” (98). By acknowledging

similarities with “others” via relatability to parental models,

readers are able to better understand the interconnectivity of

oppression and the ways in which society can stunt generational

growth. For example, the people of Dawson’s Landing are so stuck

in their ways that they seem outlandish and foolish, with their

understanding of civic responsibility tied explicitly to the

critical importance they place on reputation and family history.

Readers of Pudd’nhead Wilson are encouraged to think differently

than the people of Dawson’s Landing via the downfall of each of

the novel’s main characters due in some way to the functioning of

the society to which they most closely belong. To quote Carton,

“Twain’s novel implicates us in its community of disingenuousness

and guilt, and by so doing, facilitates our realization of that

community (ourselves) and its possible redemption through us”

(93). It is by seeing the shortcomings of the characters in the

novel that readers are potentially able to identify the

shortcomings in their own possibly outdated social constructs.

Whether Twain intended a political agenda in his writing or

not, Pudd’nhead Wilson allows the reader to consider, even

subconsciously, a social agenda through the common themes and

distinctive narratives throughout the novel. By employing

narrative imagination to give a voice to Roxy, whose roles

include being an African American, being a woman, being

destitute, and being disabled – identities that would not

normally be represented in writing – Twain is able to “promote

our sympathetic understanding of all outcast or oppressed people,

by giving their strivings a voice” (Nussbaum 96). Furthermore, by

drawing parenting parallels between Roxy, a female slave, and

Judge Driscoll, a white F.F.V. male, Twain pushes his readers to

acknowledge that, if nothing else, black and white people can all

understand the hard decisions that come with being a parent.

Indeed, Pudd’nhead Wilson, through its charges of compassion and

empathy, subtly challenges racial divides and the dominant belief

at the time that, when it comes to black and white society, never

the twain shall meet.

Works Cited

Carton, Evan. "Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Fiction of Law and

Custom." American Realism: New Essays. By Eric J. Sundquist.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982. 82-93. Print.

Jehlen, Myra. "The Ties That Bind: Race and Sex in Pudd'nhead

Wilson." American Literary History 2.1 (1990): 39-55. JSTOR.

Web. 19 Dec. 2013.

Lukenbill, W. Bernard. "Family Systems in Contemporary Adolescent

Novels: Implications for Behavior Information Modeling."

Family Relations 3.2 (1981): 219-27. JSTOR. Web. 19 Dec. 2013.Lyons, Martyn. "New Readers in the Nineteenth Century: Women,

Children, Workers."A History of Reading in the West. Amherst:

University of Massachusetts, 2003. 313-44. Print.

Meyers, Diana Tietjens. Subjection and Subjectivity:

Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral Philosophy. New York:

Routledge, 1994.

Nussbaum, Martha Craven. "The Narrative Imagination." Cultivating

Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997. 85-112. Print.

Machor, James L. Readers in History: Nineteenth Century Reading

and the Contexts of Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,

1993. Web.

Sylvester, Christine. Feminist International Relations : An

Unfinished Journey. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University

Press, 2002. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 3

Dec. 2013.

Twain, Mark. Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins: An

Authoritative Text, Textual Notes, Criticism. New York: Norton,

1980. 1-122. Print.

Go Outside! Crises of Identity for Complacent Female Characters

In 1854, English poet Coventry Patmore wrote “The Angel in

the House,” a piece dedicated, in part, to his “angelic” wife and

in part an ode to an idealized model of women everywhere (Melani

1). The angel, as described in the poem, is “passive and

powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-

sacrificing, pious, and above all, pure;” in short, the Angel

represented everything that a Victorian woman should be (1). In

1931, Virginia Woolf published “Professions for Women,” an essay

that encouraged “Killing the Angel in the House,” and called upon

women writers to write about female history and experiences to

support the drive for equal social and political consideration,

if not equality itself (1). Woolf urged women to break free from

their composed demeanor and submissive nature and use the written

word as a tool for liberation and unification.

Between the publication of “The Angel in the House” and

“Professions for Women,” and in the midst of first-wave feminism

in the United States, American authors Charlotte Perkins Gilman

and Kate Chopin were taking the task of fair representation to

heart, writing stories from a female perspective. In Gilman’s

“The Yellow Wallpaper” and Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby,” the female

protagonists’ acquiescence with their limited gender roles,

including deprivation of social purpose and interaction, is the

impetus for neurosis. Moreover, both Gilman and Chopin employ

complacent female protagonists to show the physiological and

social dangers of compliance with the gender stereotypes and

patriarchal norms of the 19th century.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the female narrator is never

given a name, an unspoken commentary on her fundamental

inferiority. Rather, her identifiers are ‘wife,’ ‘mother,’ and

most obviously, ‘patient’ – roles that are intrinsically linked

to all of her interpersonal relationships. Without a name to call

her own, she is not able claim an independent sense of person;

she is, instead, a placeholder. This namelessness foreshadows the

confinement of the narrator’s identity, and the dependent nature

of that identity, in the limited social space she inhabits

throughout the text.

The narrator, however, is relatively indifferent about her

subordinate role. Although she acknowledges the terms of her

treatment and her husband John’s opinion of her mental condition

(neurosis) – “Personally, I disagree with their ideas”– she

ultimately decides to “Let it alone” (Gilman 486). John, she

says, is “practical in the extreme” (Gilman 486) and this seems

reason enough for her to listen to him, and even be persuaded to

reassess her own symptoms. At one point she exclaims, “I am glad

my case is not too serious!” even when it is clear that she is

falling into a serious mental decline (Gilman 487). Despite

feeling like her issues are more severe than they appear, she

does not argue with John’s diagnosis even though it ignores most

of her concerns. Instead, she concedes that, “If a physician of

high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friend and

relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but

temporary nervous depression ...what is one to do?” (Gilman 486).

If “under the paternalistic, authoritarian control of a male

physician, the Victorian woman regressed physically and

emotionally” (Bassuk 252), then it is all the more significant

that the narrator’s husband is also her doctor. She complies with

his diagnosis as a physician, but also with his direction as a

husband. In doing so, the narrator loses the power to describe

and understand her illness as a patient; as a wife, she is

infantilized to the point of harmful passivity.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman utilizes the condition of

neurosis to demonstrate how compliance with oppressive roles can

be dangerous to physiological health. According to psychiatrist

Ellen Bassuk, Victorian doctors and medical care was “often

influenced by prejudicial, culturally bound beliefs about women

and their bodies” (245-6). With this understanding,“The Yellow

Wallpaper” is in part an autobiographical criticism of Gilman’s

own medical history with neurosis, and her treatment by Dr. S.

Weir Mitchell, a well-respected physician of the times best known

for his “rest cure” for women. The “rest cure” involved

prescribing women long hours of sleep and minimal intellectual

stimulation in order to recover from their “mental

instabilities.” Because women were viewed as the “weaker” sex,

physicians believed that the best way to cure any women’s disease

was by decreasing, not increasing, her activity (Beauboeuf 29).

Mitchell’s cure, which was reflective of other medical approaches

to women’s issues of the times, emphasized minimal female

participation in their own “healing” process: “Mitchell made it

clear to his patients that he was in total control and that their

feelings, questions, and concerns must be disregarded” (Bassuk

247).

In “Doctoring the Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane Thrailkill, an

American literature professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, describes the

narrator’s account as a thinly veiled depiction of “Gilman’s

treatment at the hands of Mitchell as paradigmatic of the

patriarchal silencing of women,” and points to the story as a

criticism of the gendered logic employed by male physicians and

men in general during this time (526). Like many of his

contemporaries, “Mitchell believed that women were fundamentally

inferior to men and that their nervous systems were more

irritable...In fact, normal female functions or femininity were

considered diseases” (Bassuk 251). Furthermore, “Mitchell

insisted that women were irreversibly constrained by their bodies

and should not aspire beyond traditional gender roles” (Bassuk

252). Gilman, in turn, argued that because of these androcentric

understandings of social roles, “the domesticated wife is

basically a victim of the household” (qtd. in Thrailkill 529).

Importantly, however, the intent of this analysis is not to

criticize Dr. Mitchell, but rather to explicate the ways in which

“The Yellow Wallpaper” criticizes female compliance with

patriarchal silencing and assigned roles of subordination like

those employed in Mitchell’s so-called “cures.” The problem was

not so much with the “rest cure” itself but rather with the

people in 19th century American society who were so convinced by

socially constructed notions of gender and inherent female

fragility that they legitimately believed that these types of

cures would work. Ironically, in their various published works,

both Gilman and Mitchell do seem to agree on one point: women

must establish a greater sense of purpose in their lives.

Mitchell attributed many nervous disorders to “the daily fret and

wearisomeness of lives which, passing out of maidenhood, lack

those distinct purposes and aims which, in the lives of men, are

like the steadying influence of the fly-wheel on an engine” (qtd.

in Thrailkill 538). Gilman, similarly, sees women’s limited

social roles as damaging, and challenges them to establish

greater roles for themselves upon entering adulthood. The

difference, of course, is that Mitchell refers to roles within

the home and roles that comply with the needs of men, while

Gilman looks for women to develop new independent, political

roles. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it is the narrator’s compliance

with medical and social roles that lead to her eventual madness –

an outcome that reinforces Gilman’s message that female

compliancy with patriarchal oppression is destructive to female

autonomy and mental stability.

The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” constantly complies

with her subordinate gender role: “John laughs at me, of course,

but one expects that in a marriage” (Gilman 486).The narrator’s

opinion is ridiculed by her husband, but rather than demand his

respect, she writes off his response as acceptable “in a

marriage,” where a husband is always superior to his wife. Later,

she says, “I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest

and comfort, and here I am being a comparative burden already!”

(Gilman 488). Here, again, she does not criticize John for

dismissing her real medical condition, but rather feels

apologetic for burdening him, something that a wife is never

“supposed” to do. Even her final act of “freeing” the woman from

behind the yellow wallpaper, which seems so independently

constructed in the mind of the narrator, is still, in part, a

wife’s creation for her husband’s (however twisted) approval: “I

don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in,

till John comes. I want to astonish him” (Gilman 497). Indeed,

even though the narrator appears to emerge victorious as she

“creeps” over her husband’s body at the end of the text, John is

merely passed out, and upon awakening he will surely admonish his

wife and put her, once again, under his strict control.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” does not actively

fight against her socially assigned gender role, but instead

internalizes her pitiful protests and eventually goes mad. As MIT

philosophy professor Sally Haslanger discusses, “Without a

recognition of oppressive structures and the overall patterns of

advantage and disadvantage, individual slights or conflicts can

seem harmless” (41); however, as is obvious in “The Yellow

Wallpaper,” ignoring these “slights” can lead to far more

devastating social and mental conditions. Gilman intentionally

employs a protagonist who is unable or unwilling to actively

fight her role in order to show the dangers of becoming compliant

with one’s limited, ideologically constructed identity. If women

continue to accept their subordinate roles and wait for the world

to change around them, that change will never come: “Insofar as

we structure our social life to accommodate cultural meanings of

the female (and male) body, females occupy an oppressed social

condition” (Haslanger 40). Without an active attempt to change

this condition, females will continue to be “systematically

subordinated throughout history” (Haslanger 36).

What then, is the significance of neurosis in the text? Why

not have a compliant narrator who is also mentally sound?

Arguably, because – hewing to the prevailing logic of the times –

no married woman was. If, “from a social standpoint a neurosis

can be defined as a deviation from the ‘normal’” (Horney 428),

and women are viewed as dramatically biologically different

beings from men, so much so that they are assumed to have

inherently different social, cultural, and political capacities,

then to be a woman according to androcentric standards, is to be,

in some ways, an inescapable victim of neurosis.

According to psychoanalyst Karen Horney’s analysis in 1939,

a victim of neurosis can display the following tendencies: “he

does not develop his potentialities as fully as he could under

given conditions; his work is less effective, less successful,

and particularly less creative than it might otherwise be; his

capacities to assert himself and to enjoy whatever life offers

him are impaired” (427). Essentially, the definition of neurosis

in this time included all of those things which women in their

“appropriate roles” could not do. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the

woman becomes “increasingly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper

since, deprived of companionship, exercise and any intellectual

stimulation, she has nothing else to do but look at the walls”

(Oakley 30). When confined to the private and domestic sphere,

all married women lacked this companionship, this intellectual

stimulation, and this potential ability to do anything of any

real value; indeed, the work of domestic women did not have any

true, material worth – “Her work, in others words, has no

currency; it produces no effects on the world around her”

(Thrailkill 547).

Insofar as married women could not develop their potential,

contribute to society, establish independent worth, or cultivate

imagination and creativity within the confines of home, it would

appear that, according to late 19th and early 20th century

medical definitions, all married women were in some ways victims

of neurosis as the limitation of identity in the private sphere

deprived them of any real sense of social worth. If this is the

case, it is even more critical for Gilman to make women to

understand that they cannot limit themselves to single roles as

wives or mothers, but rather must develop their identities

independent of domestic roles and responsibilities.

Women, whether inherently susceptible to neurosis or not,

are challenged by Gilman to consider the implications of

accepting patriarchal gendered roles in the private sphere, where

they may potentially close the door on their public and political

voices forever. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is too

submerged in her role to truly change her circumstances. Her

irreversible isolation from society is made obvious by her move

to the countryside to “cure” her neurosis. Her dependency on her

husband is clear in her constant references to him even when he

is out of the house. Although the narrator stages a briefly

shocking rebellion against her social role, it is artificial and

impermanent at best. Gilman uses an ineffective female

protagonist to remind her readers that compliancy with domestic

gender roles endangers a woman’s independent identity, and unless

one is made consciously aware of these dangers early in life, she

too will fall into the often inescapable and oppressive

patriarchal trap.

Like Gilman, Chopin also warns against excessive

acquiescence with dominant ideological structures in her short

story, “Desiree’s Baby.” Like the narrator in “The Yellow

Wallpaper,” the female protagonist in “Desiree’s Baby" does not

have a name of her own; instead, her name, which means “to

desire” or “to want,” is given to her as an orphan by her

adoptive parents, Monsieur and Madame Valmonde. It is through

this inherent namelessness and lack of individual identity that

“Desiree seemed to invite projection: Madame Valmonde wanted a

child, Armand wanted a wife” (Peel 225), and Desiree? – well, she

just wants to make them happy.

In many ways, Desiree meets the standards of the idealized

woman that both Patmore and Mitchell fantasized about: she is

“beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere,” and regarding

her husband, “she loved him desperately” (Chopin 421-3). In many

ways, she conforms to the archetypal model of “the Angel in the

House” and follows Mitchell’s proposition that “women should be

more like men, but not equal to them. They should run their

households and their domestic lives according to male ‘rules’”

(Bassuk 250). Desiree is entirely compliant, yet suffers for her

utter reliance on domestic purpose. As Ellen Peel, a women’s

literature professor at San Diego State University, remarks,

“Desiree is immersed in her husband’s value system and therefore

never stands up to him” (Peel 235). Because she is unable to see

a way around her husband’s value system, she kills herself and

her apparently mixed-race son, realizing that neither of them can

fit into their roles as wife and heir now that their honorable

reputations have been tarnished. In her final letter to her

mother, Desiree admits this total defeat: “I must die. I cannot

be so unhappy, and live” (Chopin 424).

Although part of Desiree’s tragic end certainly lies in her

compliance with and dependency on her limited, domestic,

privatized role as wife and mother, she is also a weak character

because of her childlike nature. From the beginning, Madame

Valmonde notes, “It seemed but yesterday that Desiree was little

more than a baby herself” (Chopin 421). Desiree invites this

perception because she is naive and emotional, depending on her

husband, Armand, for happiness and failing to acknowledge that

her son is clearly of a different race. She cannot deal with

these emotions rationally, but rather is often “frightened” and

allows these fears to drive her to death.

By presenting Desiree this way, Chopin points to the

infantilization of women, and female acquiescence with this

infantilization, as another issue undermining women’s active

participation in society. Because of their subordinate role in

the social hierarchy, women are seen as less capable of

“controlling matters affecting their own health” (Oakley 35).

“The infantilization of women as incapable of taking

responsibility for themselves” is a huge factor in

institutionalizing women’s dependency on men (Oakley 35); if

women cannot make their own medical decisions for their mental

and physical health, then how can they possibly function as

independent, politically effective individuals? As sociologist

Ann Oakley notes, “In the privacy of the home, and as mothers,

women are powerful, but in public they are not, for always there

is a relationship between power and responsibility” (35). If

women are not seen as responsible for themselves, then their

voices are not ones of legitimate consideration. In “Desiree’s

Baby,” Desiree allows herself to become infantilized, acting

towards Armand as a child might – “she rose and tottered towards

him...she panted once more, clutching his arm” (Chopin 423). It

is as if, without Armand there to hold her up, Desiree has no

choice but to fall.

Although it is not explicitly stated, Desiree suffers from a

form of neurosis following her realization about the race of her

child and its impact on her relationship with her husband. If

neurosis is “a deviation from the cultural pattern” and “an

attempt to cope with life under difficult internal conditions”

(Horney 428), then Desiree is absolutely susceptible to neurosis

once her illusion of a perfect life with Armand and her son in

shattered. Desiree’s sense of purpose as a woman is dependent on

her ability to make her husband happy and proud; however, “in the

process of living up to these cultural images, women may engage

in self-silencing as they keep important aspects of their

experiences hidden from those around them” (Beauboeuf 29-30).

Furthermore, “the silencing paradigm maintains that depression is

a psychological process in which women ‘mourn’ a self that has

become ‘submerged, excluded, or weakened’ under relationships

that they are socialized to view as central to their social

acceptance and critical to their person well-being” (Beauboeuf

30). Once Desiree realizes that she will no longer have her

relationship with her husband, she suffers a complete loss of

identity because she has suffocated whatever individuality she

may have once possessed in exchange for fulfilling her role as

idealized woman and wife. She is incapable of developing any sort

of effective autonomy because she has become so entrenched in the

oppressive domestic system that has defined her purpose and her

identity. Indeed, “the young woman, as a product of her society,

has internalized so many of its values that she can never fully

attack it” (Peel 235). Although her disappearance at the

conclusion of the text could be viewed as a rebellion against

cultural norms, her fate is far too bleak to be seen as positive.

Chopin cannot give her dutifully compliant and complacent female

protagonist a happy ending because “Desiree’s Baby” is not a

story about renewal but rather about “the process of becoming a

stereotype” (Beer 36), and the devastating effects of this

conformity on the individual’s mental, physical, and emotional

health.

Because Desiree’s self-worth and self-exploration is

intrinsically linked to that of her husband, she is left with no

ambition and no understanding of her own value when he chooses to

remove her from his life; in fact, even when she knows that her

son is of African-American descent, she depends on Armand for

clarity: “What does it mean?” she asks him, “Tell me” (Chopin

423). Her role as wife is “central to her cultural and personal

identity” (Beer 30), and without it she is entirely without

purpose. Chopin seems to urge her readers to identify with

Desiree’s hopelessness and understand that for their own health,

sanity, and well-being, women must build an identity for

themselves separate from that of a man. Otherwise, men will

control a woman’s destiny, like Armand does when he tells Desiree

to leave – “That,” the narrator says, “was his last blow at fate”

(Chopin 424).

In both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Desiree’s Baby,” the

compliancy of the female protagonists with prescribed societal

expectations of the roles of women in the private sphere is the

trigger for their resulting neurosis and loss of socially and/or

politically effective identities. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the

narrator is clearly mentally unsound at the story’s conclusion,

no doubt disturbed by her domestic confinement, but notably

incapable of changing her situation. In “Desiree’s Baby,” Desiree

suffers from a complete identity crisis as her role as wife is

stripped from her and her racial status is undermined. Without

any understanding of an identity outside her stereotypically

white domestic role, Desiree, as a victim of two systems of

oppression (gender and race), cannot survive.

“Despite the radical ideological differences between Kate

Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Chopin’s total, self-

declared adjuration of any moral intent for her fiction and

Gilman’s refusal to write anything which did not have the express

intention of reform – they both had a clear and cogent sense of

artistic purpose” (Beer 5) – the kind of artistic purpose that

Woolf was surely referring to in “Killing the Angel in the

House.” Both understand the home as a “monolithic trope for the

domestic confinement of women, and the apparatus which ensures

the social control of women” (198), and therefore write stories

that warn against identifying solely with roles that are confined

to the individual household. The message behind their combined

works is clear: women must not become compliant with society’s

prescribed roles and identities but rather establish new roles

and identities for themselves outside of the limitations of the

private sphere. For 19th century women, there was a whole world

outside of the home waiting to be discovered – but first, they

had to be willing to go outside.

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Beer, Janet. Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, and Charlotte Perkins

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