Critical Research Analysis Paper:

Nameless Dystopians

Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” both had unnamed narrators despite their significance within the literary texts. A person’s name differentiates the individual from society. It is unique in its special meanings and it’ll always be apart of his or her personal identity. When an individual is anxious and faces much dilemmas in life, such a name no longer holds significance and it is disregarded. In his “Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,” Sigmund Freud considers the defence mechanisms that people take a-part in to deal with such dilemmas in life. The anonymity of the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Sonny’s Blues,” suggests their response to social influences through their anxiety.

The anonymity of  the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests her conflict with society through the personal crisis with her identity.  When a person is at crisis with his or her identity, he or she is uncertain of who they are or what role they play in life. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was anxious about forming her own identity. She asserts,“I did write for a while in spite of them,but it does exhaust me a good deal–having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition”(Gilman:648).Writing defined her identity and she felt assured when doing so. According to “Reading The Yellow Wallpaper as Post-Traumatic Writing” by Mahinur Aksehir, she asserts, “Everything that requires intellectual activity is forbidden to her, including reading and writing, consequently, she was not even allowed to work through her traumatic experience by narrativising it”(Aksehir). The narrator was unable to vent her emotions or the trauma through writing. In his third lecture of his “Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” Freud says “But closer observation shows that such a stoppage of the flow of ideas never in fact occurs. It appears to happen only because the patient holds back or gets rid of the idea that he has become aware of, under the influence of the resistances which disguise themselves as various critical judgements about the value of the idea that has occurred to him”(Freud:2219). The narrator would write occasionally and she stopped mainly because she was taking a-part in resistance and didn’t want to accept the wrong being done on her. Furthermore, she feared that her writing will cause society to oppose her. She wished to write with confidence but simultaneously she tried to drive the thought of writing because of what others may think of her.  The narrator’s uncertainty towards writing suggests the crisis she had with her identity. Social influences reduced her self-esteem and how she considered her sense of self. Once writing was taken away by her husband, her sense of self had diminished and so she was left unnamed.

The narrators anonymity suggests her conflict with social influences through her femininity as seen within her relationship with physician-husband John. He attempts to treat his wife with incentives that she disapproved of. She says how she is forbidden to work and undergoes a treatment with natural incentives(Gilman 648). John’s treatment in at itself was psychologically violence that most women endure behind closed doors. She then goes on to say, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?”(Gilman 648). As opposed to the narrator being mentally ill and a woman, John’s superiority as a male and a physician gave him priority in society. Thus, the narrator’s name or individuality held no significance since no one was willing to listen to her. In Freud’s “Female Sexuality”, he says “And if the defence against femininity is so vigorous, from what other source can it derive its strength than from that striving for masculinity which found its earliest expression in the child’s penis-envy and might well take its name from this?”(Freud 10:470). Although others can be in great opposition, the narrator’s “hysterical tendency” may have originated from her childhood when she failed to complete her phallic stage. Freud would signify infantile sexuality and would say that the narrator strived for  her husband’s masculinity. As stated in “Reading The Yellow Wallpaper as Post-Traumatic Writing”, Aksehir states, “They were imprisoned in the model of “perfect womanhood” which reduced them to split identities and thereby robbed them of essential human qualities and depersonalized them”(Aksehir). John robbed his wife’s individuality by forbidding her to write and indulging her to follow his treatment. It then goes on to say, “A perfect woman carried out “vital” tasks in the family, the first of which was bearing children”(Aksehir). After the narrator gave birth to her first child, she was so beared down with obligations, her depression had developed and eventually she became detached from her self.

The yellow wallpaper itself attributed to the narrator’s anonymity and her identity crisis. The narrator was greatly disturbed by a yellow wallpaper that is placed in her room but there is a motive behind this aggravation. The narrator asserts how the wallpaper had the “strangest yellow” and it reminded her of revolting “yellow things”(Gilman 654). This wallpaper gave the narrator a reflection of the trauma that she endured and she re-experiences it by seeing it. According to “Reading The Yellow Wallpaper as Post-Traumatic Writing,” Aksehir asserts,  “The woman creeping behind the pattern is the embodiment of the narrator, who is enslaved in that beautiful house, behind the iron bars and in the invisible but omnipresent cage of social rules and roles”(Aksehir).The narrator essentially saw a woman within the wallpaper and she is no one but herself who is enslaved by her husband John. She felt as if she was  confined by his demands and offensive treatment within the 4 walls. She says how she also sees other women embodied in the wallpaper(Gilman 656). Just like herself, other women face the same tyranny behind closed doors. By leaving the narrator unnamed, Gilman wanted to portray not one specific woman, but other woman who face the same distress as her narrator.

The secrets withheld from the unnamed narrator in “Sonny’s Blues” justifies  his anonymity and conflict with social influences. When a person comprehends that they are withheld from significant information, it’s as if they are not worth to know it and they will then detach from their own sense of self. According to “Family and Community Secrets: Secrecy in the Works of James Baldwin,” by Janet Harrison, she refers to “Sonny’s Blues” and says, “In all instances something important is not being communicated and the result is a lack of knowledge of one’s self, one’s history, and one’s future”(Harrison). Due to secrets, a person is deprived of essential information that correspond to their identity in some way. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator says “And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he’s moved just a little closer to that darkness outside”(Baldwin 7). The narrator reflects back to a time when the elders wouldn’t speak near the  children and they would disclose information about Harlem. Gradually, the narrator falls into the darkness of the outside world and among this darkness also falls his name. He fears the outside world and is exposed to so much darkness. Thus, his name held no significance. In “Sonny’s Blues” ,the mother tells the narrator how his uncle was intentionally run over by white men (Baldwin 8). The cruelty of the harlem neighborhood was again withheld from the narrator and so was his uncle’s death. Since his uncle’s death was never shared when his father was alive, he wasn’t able to understand the impact it had on his father.  The narrator then goes on to say, “I had had suspicions, but I didn’t name them, I kept putting them away”(Baldwin 1). Sonny’s drug addiction was also a secret kept from the narrator. This contributed to  the narrator and his detachment from himself. In such a situation, the narrator didn’t want to know who he really was, but who Sonny was.

The anonymity of the narrator in  “Sonny’s Blues” suggests his conflict with social influences through his relationship with Sonny. With the least consideration of himself, the narrator focused on his brother Sonny. After his mother tells him of his uncle, the narrator grew more anxious about Sonny. He was concerned about Sonny falling in the same footsteps as his uncle.  In “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator doubts Sonny’s passion for music by responding with “Are you serious?”(Baldwin 10). The narrator never understood that music was apart of Sonny’s identity. It was challenging to consider his own identity since he couldn’t even comprehend his brother’s. In his “Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,” Freud considers that an individual chooses to “replace” his or her wish with something acceptable since they were able to control the original wish(Freud 2215). Through sublimation, a person acts out the repressed impulse in a positive way. Sonny sublimated his desire to take drugs with the beauty of jazz music which was socially acceptable in Harlem. The dilemma is that the narrator was never aware of Sonny’s addiction and as a result he failed to understand him and his passion for music.

The anonymity of the narrators in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Sonny’s Blues,” suggests their conflict with social influences through their anxiety. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” writing being taken away from the narrator was anxiety for her. Without it, she was incomplete and she couldn’t express her feelings. Furthermore, her personal crisis with identity developed once it was taken away. The narrator being a woman and having to be treated by her husband was considered to be anxiety as well. During that time, women usually lacked attention and were beared down with rules and regulations. These high expectations caused women like Gilman’s narrator to be detached from themselves. The portrayal of the yellow wallpaper essentially encountered the motive to her anonymity. This wallpaper depicted the tyranny  most women endured behind closed doors. The narrator in  Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” faced anxiety because of all the secrets that were withheld from him. Secrets about his father’s brother and Sonny’s drug addiction caused the narrator to be detached from himself. Let alone himself, Sonny was the narrator’s main concern. Society was associated to the anxiety of the unnamed narrators and it justified for their anonymity.