The Walls Are Closing In

"Monsters and vampires, man-made creatures and ghosts, mob cruelty and murderers, these are the stock ingredients of horror...  All such terrors, however, are seen from a distance approaching us from outside ourselves...  But when the madness and collapse are presented from inside, rather than viewed from without, then the solid ground itself shifts and crumbles, and we do indeed find ourselves looking into a bottomless pit." (Butler 1967: 77).

So far in dealing with the Gothic we have encountered "the stock ingredients of horror" that Butler is discussing in his article.  The Yellow Wallpaper is the first introduction we have had to the introspective psychological aspect of the collapse of the self.  The room becomes a physical manifestation of the narrator's deteriorating mind.  We are trapped with her as she tears away the layers of this interior to free "the women" in the walls.

After reading Gilman's account of this maddening representation, I looked back on a film I watched in my British Horror Film class from last quarter that is without a doubt a modern experience of trapping an audience within a disturbing setting.

Repulsion (1965) is filmed entirely from the introspective point of view of the film’s protagonist, Carole.  The audience is trapped with Carole in her flat, which also serves as a physical representation of her rapidly decaying mind, for the majority of the movie.  Carole is consistently being objectified as an adult woman in the world outside of her apartment but within the confines of her mind, she has managed to maintain the sexual mentality of a child.  Throughout the film she is confronted with issues of sexual repression as well as the devastating results of social pressure.  Like The Yellow Wallpaper this film acknowledges the reality in which society creates the “monsters” that it is destined to look down upon.

The way Carole sees her encounters with outside world are reflected when they are redisplayed to us within her flat.  There is a moment- in one of the many extended walking scenes of the film- where a construction worker yells something nonsensical at her, which is obviously of a sexual nature.  Despite the fact that this seems like nothing but a passing comment in a long day, the man reappears in a serious way throughout the film.  There are three rape scenes that take place in the apartment while Carole's sister is away and has left her alone.  These rapes are considered to be a figment of her imagination, but what is interesting is that the man assaulting her is the same construction worker from earlier on in the film.  This instance is a perfect example of her internalization of these unwelcome sexual advances.

Carole, clearly bothered by the sexualized world of London in the "Swinging Sixties" (of which we see nothing of all I must note) retreats completely into the seclusion of the flat.  This is where the extended metaphor of her mind being constantly invaded by the advances of men, who repulse her, begins to really take effect.  She imagines the cracks around the room to crack further, as her own mental state begins also to crack.  Even as she tries to lock herself away from men by not leaving her place of residence, she cannot escape the impediment on her unconscious, as depicted by the groping hands protruding from the walls of the hallway above.

It is this social pressure that leads Carole to give in completely to her madness, driving her to murder to men who seek her as a sexual object.  In the end, she is discovered lying fragile and alone underneath her sister's bed.  At this discovery the neighbors we have never seen throughout the film come to see the spectacle, and quite literally look down upon her as they whisper their misgivings: the monster their world has created.