Blogging on Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Aimee Byrd is not an easy task. It’s a doozy of a book, and I’m still not quite sure what I think of it. There are parts I agree with, and parts I disagree with. Overall, it’s a valuable tool for deconstructing – or peeling away the “wallpaper,” as Aimee Byrd terms it.
The entirety of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is framed in light of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Byrd’s cover has peeling yellow paper with a woman behind it. Each section ends with a “Peel and Reveal” on how to apply the theological points she makes. Throughout the book, she entreats the reader to see the peeling yellow wallpaper that limits and oppresses women in our churches.
There’s a lot of “wallpaper” discussed in the book; I cannot cover all of it. Her book is vast and theologically DENSE. I can’t believe it is less than 300 pages, because it is chalk-full of information; however, I confess there were times where I didn’t quite understand what point she was trying to make with her theology. So, if theology isn’t really your thing, you may want to skip this one; or, read it for the stuff you do understand and don’t worry about what goes over your head. (The latter is the approach I took.)
With all this in mind, I think it’s pertinent to start with my own experience with The Yellow Wallpaper…
The Yellow Wallpaper
Written in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is based off of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own experience with rest therapy. Rest Therapy was the “abstention from any mental, social, or physical activity.” In Gilman’s own words, her doctor “sent me home with solemn advice to ‘live a domestic a life as far as possible,’ to ‘have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,’ and ‘never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.’”[1] Thankfully, she flouted her doctor’s orders and wrote The Yellow Wallpaper based off of her experience.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, a young mother (whose name is probably Jane) is prescribed rest therapy by her doctor-husband, John. She secretly chronicles her new life – telling us about the bars on the windows, the disrepair of the furniture, and the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room. She obsessively tries to figure out the pattern of this wallpaper, and eventually sees a woman hidden behind “bars” trying to break free. It isn’t long before she completely associates herself with the woman. The last scene of the book is of her crawling around the room, saying she won’t go back behind the bars.
There are a multitude of ways to look at this fascinating work, and I encourage you to read it (it’s free on Google) as well as literary discourse on it. Aimee Byrd’s use of it is just one of many ways it can be applied to how women are still oppressed by patriarchal mores in western cultures.
But first, I want to share my experience, as it is incredibly strange…and incredibly telling.
When I Read The Yellow Wallpaper
I read The Yellow Wallpaper for an alternative assignment as a junior in high school. It’s important that it was an “alternative assignment; we didn’t didn’t discuss it as a class.
I really wish we had.
I did well on the assignment…Except for the puzzling comment my teacher made at the top of my paper. It said something along the lines of, “What about the theme of women’s oppression?”
I dismissed the comment, as I’d gotten a good grade. But it did puzzle me. What on earth had she meant?
I had missed the entire point of the novel.
Maybe I asked my mom, but I’m not sure. By college I understood the premise a little more: it was a critique on rest therapy, which was prescribed to women every time they showed ambition to do and be more than a wife and mother.
I dismissed it as something done “back then,” having no bearing on my own desires to be a wife and mother now. Mine was a choice, and a counter-cultural one at that; back then, it wasn’t.
Thus, I had no interest in re-reading it – until I picked up Aimee Byrd’s book.
My Second Read Through
I wasn’t far into Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood before I realized I needed to re-read The Yellow Wallpaper. I’m so glad I did.
On this read through, I realized the subtle hints of oppression. The doctor-husband John is condescending, bordering on gaslighting. He feels he knows best, and his wife must follow his instructions. She tries to confront him with her gut feelings – such as, it would be better to have “stimulation,” and how she wants to write. But with the weight of society telling her she’s wrong…”what is one to do?”[2]
In re-reading it, I see why I missed the oppression the first time around. At 17, I’d already had at least three years of purity culture behind me. I’d been thoroughly indoctrinated on what a “good” Christian woman should want.
In conservative Evangelical culture, becoming a wife and mother is seen as the highest calling of every woman; submitting to one’s husband in everything is a “biblical” mandate. Of course, you can – and are encouraged to – voice your opinion. But if – like John in The Yellow Wallpaper – your husband says he knows best, then “what is one to do?”
Submit. That is the only thing to do. Even if it leads to problems in the future – problems you cautioned against – the godly thing to do is submit to his authority. Being a submissive wife, home-maker, and mother is seen as the most important aspect in being a “counter-cultural” Christian woman.
The Woman Behind the Bars
I didn’t see the oppression because I was living in the world of The Yellow Wallpaper – and no one had taught me to see it for what it was. It wasn’t until I read Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood (which I’ll be re-reading and blogging about next) that I began to see it.
Now that I’ve seen it, I cannot un-see it.
I want to make it clear, parenthood is an amazing calling. I believe God calls most men and women to purse it. Nothing is more sanctifying than parenthood – nothing. Nothing will show you your own sinfulness and need for God than having children. And nothing teaches you the unique love of God like loving an unruly toddler.
But fatherhood is not all men are called to do; why, then, would motherhood be all a woman is called to do?
To peel back the yellow wallpaper, we have to examine our assumptions and truly hold them up to the light of God’s heart. We must ask ourselves: have we been so focused on following the law that we have failed to recognize God’s heart? And what is God’s heart for women?
Aimee Byrd’s book shows us a portion of it. And it is far more freeing than I’ve been lead to believe.
Notes
[1] Aimee Byrd, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Zondervan, 2020), 14. This was another ebook, so the pages may be off.
[2] Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yellow Wallpaper (New England Magazine Corporation, 1892), 2-3.
