In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the reader follows the narrator, who suffers from depression, as she and her husband travel to a mansion estate for the summer. The title mentions the yellow wallpaper, which the narrator discovers in one of the rooms and quickly becomes mesmerized with. The author writes this story intending to bring awareness to mental illness & shining a light on these unspoken topics. The short story illustrates the usage of the Id, Superego, and Ego. Id is visible throughout the story as the narrator accepts the unconscious. She releases her inner thoughts on paper as that’s the only way she can confront these experiences. By allowing herself to reach into her unconscious, she also allows herself to open her imagination. She stops …show more content…
She imagines a woman, trapped inside the wallpaper and trying to get out. She then begins to see many women trapped within these walls. She starts to identify with these women as she believes that she has escaped the walls herself on her way to freedom at the expense of her mental health. However, under her husband's control, she's unable to speak up for herself or what she is experiencing. 2 Superego is another driving factor within the short story. In the story, the narrator addresses two male figures, her brother and her husband, John. She writes about how neither of the two believes that she is suffering and instead believes that she just needs rest to help improve her condition. Throughout the story, she continues to write about her husband and her relationship with him. Her brother and her husband both act as a symbol for societal expectations as she goes through trying to grasp her condition while they constantly tell her that it is not as serious as she believes and that it is only a temporary problem that has a cure. This is when she starts to believe that she is thinking irrationally and when her ego comes into