Panopticism Vs Wallpaper

Panopticism vs. The Yellow Wallpaper Although many people may say that Foucault’s story “Panopticism” and Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” are opposites, in many aspects they are very similar. Despite the fact that In Gilman’s story John seems to be genuine in his actions, he is doing all the same rehabilitating things to the narrator that the idea of Panopticism has. Through treating people like prisoners, focusing on changing people’s ways and always being watched by things surrounding them these two stories both connect on trying to shape people. Some of these techniques may not have worked on particular cases, but were still conducted due to the majority of change that was proven to be the outcome. Society today may look down upon

The guards in the tower are always watching the prisoners even when someone may not be in there and the girl in the yellow wallpaper is always around the narrator even though she does not really exist. In Panopticism the whole strength and power that is the core of the idea is that the inmates must always feel like they are being watched, even if they are not ; “Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so” (Foucault 454). Even at night when they are in complete privacy the inmates still feel as though the tower is looking at them from every angle at all times. The prisoners are given a cell with walls to separate them from everyone except the people who watch them. This relates to when the narrator in The Yellow wallpaper feels the woman in the wall following her around. The woman in the walls is the only person who she can always see and is always around her, haunting her. She sees the woman in different lightings and at all times of the day, “I can see her, out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight” (Gilman

The ethics of both of these stories may be out of the normative and looked down upon but in reality they are both just trying to better people and make them worth something again. The idea of Panopticism is the idea of having power and control over someone while making them into something you want. The same kind of power is seen with John and the narrator as he has all control over where she lives and what she does all day to try to fix her “nervousness”. Trying to put someone back into society after they are not use to acting a certain way can either scare them or drive them even more insane which is what happened in both of these stories. Both John and the government in Panopticism use similar techniques of being watched, treating them like prisoners and trying to change their ways in order to fix them. Whether the prisoners and patients felt like it, the people controlling them were trying to shape them for the better even when it seemed like the