Clinical Depression In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Throughout history there have been more reported cases on clinical depression regarding woman than there have been with men. Also, there are many stereotypes that say women are delicate and breakable creatures that should spend most of their time taking care of the home, participating in girl things, and also that they should not work real jobs and refrain from intellectual thinking. In the Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is brought to a rented house where she is supposed to recuperate from a “sickness” that she encountered. The form of depression she had was very common for women to have during this time, especially richer women who didn’t have much to do. Weir Mitchell developed an antidote that he called "the cure" and was a theory that women should avoid doing any kind of physical work or mental thinking and to also go outside for fresh air as much as possible.

Since she was locked up in a room in the rented house she began to hallucinate and imagine different things in the yellow wallpaper that she despised. However, as the story progresses it becomes harder and more difficult to determine whether the women's imagination is getting the best of her or if she is beginning to go mad, since she hallucinates people in the yellow wallpaper. Interestingly enough, Gilman’s story actually isn’t the first time that women have been linked to weak nerves in regards to the medical field. In fact, nervousness in females have had medical attention for centuries. Gilman’s main purpose in writing The Yellow Wallpaper is to condemn not only misogynistic principles, but the types of medical treatment it resulted