Outsider

=The Narrator as Outsider: "A Souvenir of Japan" and "The Yellow Wallpaper"=

In "A Souvenir of Japan" and "The Yellow Wallpaper," authors Angela Carter and Charlotte Perkins Gilmore focus on female narrators who are forced into captivity by their male counterparts. While some readers might consider these stories simply as commentaries on the power males hold over females, a close reading shows these stories explore more than the theme of captivity. Through use of imagery and point of view, these authors present narrators who are both trapped indoors and perceived as outsiders in their respective communitites. Further, the narrators share a similar method for coping with their captive, outcast state. The women, rather than attempting a physical escape, choose to escape into their minds, emphasizing the power of the imagination.

First, in "A Souvenir of Japan," Angela Carter presents a narrator who is clearly perceived as an outsider by the Japanese people with whom she lives. It is evident this narrator is an outsider by the physical boundaries laid between her and the “Japanese world” that surrounds her. For example, the story opens with the narrator saying, “When I went outside to see if he was coming home…” (Carter 266). This opening image, then, shows the narrator emerging from an interior, secluded world into the raucous, public one where children play with sparklers in the street (Carter 266). Such an image might, at first glance seem innocuous - perhaps the narrator was only inside for a moment; perhaps she feels comfortable outside and spends much of her time in the company of her Japanese neighbors. However, five paragraphs later, the narrator offers a more detailed explanation as to why she is first placed in this story within the confines of her home. In describing her relationship with her Japanese lover, she admits to having “…often appeared to be his wife” (Carter 267). This pseudo-wife role takes on significance when she offers this cultural background: “The word for wife, okusan, means the person who occupies the inner room and rarely, if ever, comes out of it” (Carter 267). This role is reiterated when the narrator describes her daily life as, “Once I was home, however, it was as if I occupied the inner room and he did not expect me to go out of it…” (Carter 269). The narrator, then, assumes the role that is assigned to her as an okusan; she lives in the interior, separated physically from the outside world. Ironically, it is the very nature of her physical separation that also causes her to be an outsider for the “real” Japanese world exists not in her secluded apartment, but in the streets and neighborhood she does not venture to experience.

The narrator further distinguishes herself as an outsider through her point of view. By carefully choosing pronouns, the narrator establishes four distinct perspectives. First, the Japanese people, in general, are referred to as “they.” For example, when citing a specific word, the narrator explains, “In their language, fireworks are called hannabi…” (Carter 266). Later, the narrator describes how her Japanese neighbors so diligently keep their streets tidy by stating, “…they all behaved so well, kept everything so well, and lived with such rigorous civility” (Carter 271). Contrasted to the “they” is the “we” in this story. The narrator only invokes “we” to represent herself and her lover together. For example, she states, “…and once we rode the train out of Shinjuku…” and “By the time we arrived at our destination…” (Carter 266). The first person pronoun, “I,” is reserved for occasions when the narrator refers to herself. When describing her place in the neighborhood, she says, “The entire street politely disapproved of me. Perhaps they thought I was contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile for he was obviously younger than I” (Carter 267). Finally, the narrator occasionally addresses the reader directly as “you.” For instance, when trying to explain her relationship with her lover, she confesses, “Well, then, you must realize that I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror” (Carter 270). By sharing such “secret” thoughts directly with “you,” the reader, the narrator is creates another interior world. This is the world where she and the reader are separated from the “we” and “they” characters who inhabit this story.

Not only does this narrator live apart from the people around her and address these people as others, she further recedes into her interior world by living through her imagination. For example, she compares her lover, Taro, not to "real" people she encounters on a daily basis, but to the fictive character in a Japanese children's story. She explains, "In a toy store, I saw one of those books for children with pictures...It was the story of Momotaro, who was born from a peach...He [her lover, Taro], too, had the inhuman sweetness of a child born from something other than a mother..." (Carter 268). By imagining her lover not as a flesh-and-blood male but as a make-believe "inhuman" character, the narrator makes their relationship take on a fairytale, ethereal quality. She goes on to describe their relationship by saying, "Sometimes, it was possible for me to believe he had practiced an enchantment upon me..." (Carter 268). Again, this reference to the supernatural, imaginitive world illustrates the narrator's departure from the reality of her situation. By escaping into her mind, her fictious world, she is no longer trapped as an okusan inside the house. Instead, she is enchanted. She is in love. She is a part of a larger, more beautiful story than the one she experiences in reality.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilmore's story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator chooses a similar method for escaping from captivity. Like Carter, Gilmore constructs her story from the point of view of a woman placed under captivity by a male. In this case, the narrator is forced to live for a summer in the attic room of a home under the strict control of her husband, John, a physician. The narrator explains she must follow his guidance due to a "temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendancy;" however, she also doubts his authority in this matter (Gilmore 513). For example, she admits, "John is a physician, and //perhaps...perhaps// that is one reason I do not get well faster" (Gilmore 513). The narrator further emphasizes such doubt in the authority of her caregivers by mentally arguing with her husband and brother, both doctors. She thinks, "Personally, I disagree with their ideas...But what is one to do?" (Gilmore 513). This last question the narrator asks is crucial as it represents her acceptance of her fate. That is, she may disagree with her husband, brother, or physician as much as she likes, but she truly has no control over her situation. She has no power to stop her captivity.

While residing in her summer home, the narrator is not only confined to the house, but to a particular room. She describes her locale as, "It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore" (Gilmore 514). While this initial description portrays a large and bright place, further details reveal it is actually confining and ominous. The narrator says, "...the windows are barred for little children...the color [of the wallpaper] is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow" (Gilmore 514). This is a key passage in the story for two reasons. First, the reader is made aware of the narrator's prison-like confinement. Second, the wallpaper is introduced - a symbol to later stand for the narrator's esape into her imagination.

As the narrator's confinement continues, her mental state seems to decline; such decline is evidenced in her growing obsession with the wallpaper. Her obsession begins with comments such as, "It dwells on my mind so!" (Gilmore 517). Soon, this obsession escalates as the wallpaper no longer simply dwells on her mind, but consumes it. The wallpaper's pattern ceases to contain flowers or vines - rational wallpaper designs. Instead, the narrator explains, "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will...And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern" (Gilmore 518). The narrator convinces herself that the wallpaper is living, that a woman lives within its pattern, and that a secret world exists there. In fact, she so convinces herself of these ideas that she soon imagines herself as the woman living in the wallpaper. She admits seeing "...there are so many of those creeping women and they creep so fast," and she asks, "I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?" (Gilmore 523). At the height of the narrator's mental decline, she believes she has become what she imagines. For her, the real world no longer exists. She has escaped into her mind, into a place where she is free.

In both stories, then, the mind becomes a powerful tool. It allows these women to not simply escape their confining situations, but also to enter an enchanted place where they belong. Outcasts in their societies due to cultural barriers or mental conditions, these narrators are women who do not belong to their physical surroundings. For them, the best place to dwell is within their own minds.

__Works Cited:__ Carter, Angela. "A Souvenir of Japan." __The Norton Introduction to Literature__. Shorter 9th ed. Eds. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays.New York: Norton, 2006, 266-272.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." __The Norton Introduction to Literature__. Shorter 9th ed. Eds. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton 2006, 513-524.


 * This page was created by Erinn Bentley.**