Prison of the Mind: Shutter Island vs. The Yellow Wallpaper
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a twisted story of a wife’s struggle to convince her husband of her illness. Her husband, John, is a physician who believes removing his wife to a country home will help calm what he coins her “slight hysterical tendency.” The wife secretly writes in a journal to express her frustration about her husband’s denial, but cannot openly express her concerns to a controlling husband. He forbids her to write because he believes it worsens her tendencies and slowly removes more of her privileges as the story goes on. She also writes to express her unhappiness with her new surroundings, specifically her room’s yellow wallpaper. She becomes obsessed with the designs of the wallpaper and eventually begins to imagine that there is a women trapped in the wallpaper. At the conclusion of the story, the wife finally becomes convinced that she is the woman who escaped from the wallpaper.
The woman in Gilman’s story creates a delusion in order to cope with her surroundings. She is the victim of a controlling husband and a family who will not seek for her the proper treatment for a serious illness. She becomes powerless and creates an alternate reality to escape from her troubles. In Shutter Island, a film released in 2010 and directed by Martin Scorsese, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Dicaprio) and his partner, Chuck Aule, are assigned to a case at the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. They are investigating the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient who supposedly vanished from her locked room. Dr. John Cawley, the head psychiatrist, explains that Rachel was institutionalized after drowning her three children. Daniels and his partner spend the majority of the movie investigating the women’s disappearance while discovering some secrets about the facility itself. Daniels begins to believe there is a conspiracy involving another patient there named Andrew Laeddis. Laeddis, however, was put in Ashecliff after setting Daniels’ old apartment building on fire killing several people including Daniels’ wife. At the end of the story, however, the plot twists and Daniels is part of an elaborate scheme involving his physicians to help him realize his true identity. It turns out that Marshall Daniels’ real name is Andrew Laeddis and he is a patient at Ashecliff.
Dr. John Cawley attempts to treat Andrew’s delusions by allowing him to play out his fantasy so he can discover for himself that none of it exists. In reality, Andrew’s wife suffers from extreme depression and drowns her three children. He comes home to find what she has done and shoots her. He is then admitted to Ashecliff because he constantly creates alternate realities to cope with his real life trauma. Andrew’s world is one he has created in his own mind much like the wife in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Both are victims of circumstance and need these alternate realities to cope with their illness. The wife is reconstructing her real captivity into the captivity of the wallpaper. This delusion allows her to imagine that she has broken free from the wallpaper and metaphorically free from the troubles in her real life. Andrew Laeddis’s character also creates an alternate life where he does not have to deal with the horrible events that have happened in his real life. Since Andrew Laeddis has suffered from a more traumatic incident, he creates a much more elaborate story to block forget it.
The difference in the two character’s alternate realities is found in the formation of them. Andrew Laeddis actively contruscts his alternate reality and continually assigns roles to people as they enter his life. The wife, however, simply allows herself to fall deeper into an obsession with the wallpaper. She does not incorporate the people around her into her delusion, but allows herself to become an essential part of it. Still, both characters eventually become unaware of reality and are forever prisoners of their own minds.
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” College of Staten Island Library.
12 March 2010.
Shutter Island. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer. Paramount Pictures, 2010.
Narrator: Christina Ricci
John: Adrien Brody
Julie: Winona Ryder
