Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Taking Control of the Mind Imagine waking up every day and feeling angry, hopeless, anxious, and not even enjoying the things you do. It would be a life that would be miserable and not even enjoyable. Being depressed is something that is crippling. People have a hard time holding down a job, and even having relationships. Everyday they have to struggle to find a way through the day. However even though it is hard there is medication to help. The medication alleviates some of the symptoms and makes them more manageable. Having access to medication has really helped improve the lives of people. Despite this, things were not always this easy to fix. We did not always have medication at hand to help. Around the 1800’s doctors would simple prescribe

Woman would tell their doctors about it but nothing would be done. Woman were looked at as being at a lower standard then men were. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” it exposes many of the operations of patriarchy through the rest cure, social, and especially psychological restraints placed upon the narrator. To continue with that,the rest cure first started being used in the late 1800s. The cure was used to treat hysteria, neurasthenia, and other nervous illness. Some doctors claimed that the cure itself had done more harm than good, but it still was used. The rest cure lasted about six to eight weeks and the patient had to follow several different conditions. The patient was not allowed to be around friends or family, they would essentially be isolated. Bed rest was also pushed very heavily, and so was eating a very fatty diet. Patients were essentially forced to live like an infant. They would be cleaned, fed, and watched over. The doctors also used massage and electrotherapy to make sure their muscles would still be toned. In extreme cases patients would not be allowed to read or write. The author of The Yellow Wallpaper went through this exact same

She wants to be able to write and use her “imaginative power” to let out what is on her mind. It is her way of coping with what she is going through. However, her husband immediately shuts this idea down saying it will lead to excited fancies. He does not realize that he is not allowing his wife to let her brain work psychologically and relieve stress. For her this is an outlet that she wants to use in order to help her self-deal with post- partum depression. By the end of the story we see the woman take the yellow wall paper and turn it into something it is not. At first she looked at the wallpaper as being something that looked horrible in the room, and she wanted to change it. Continuing through the story she begins to imagine that there is something more to the wallpaper than she thinks. At the very end, the woman goes completely mad and tears down the wallpaper. She believes that by taking down the wallpaper she is essentially helping the woman that are trapped in the wallpaper. This is a prime example that being psychologically repressed pushed her to ultimately go