Hysteria In The Yellow Wallpaper

In the story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman she writes of her postpartum depression, which during that time period was dismissed as “hysteria”. In The Yellow Wallpaper there are very evident signs and symptoms of depression. By the end of the story, the narrator becomes one with the wallpaper itself, this marks her mental breakdown.
Postpartum depression during the 1800s was not even classified as such, they considered this to be a type of “hysteria”. Hysteria was known as an illness of females only. Doctors of this time period believed that hysteria was brought on by an emotional response to external stimuli along with other external factors. It was believed that lots of silence, solitude, and rest was the way to treat women

The narrator states that she is “-absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas”. By John forbidding her to “work”, this forces her to repress her imagination and her thoughts. Her “work” may have served as a healthy outlet for her, though having to repress this outlet instead damages her more than the “work” itself would have. She goes on to say, “—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition and I confess it always makes me feel bad”. John does not seem to take the narrator’s illness as seriously as she feels it should be taken, he tries to consistently assure her that there is barely anything wrong with her. The mere thought of her condition may make her feel bad because of the fact that she is not allowed to express herself through her writing. The narrator says in her one of her writings, “He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency”. John thinks that having the narrator repress her story writing and imagination, that this will help her. Though, it’s obvious that by the end of the story this was the wrong thing to do. There is the possibility that if the

When John places her in what used to be a nursery, the narrator says, “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—“. In this quote the narrator is talking about the wallpaper itself, though one can infer that she could be talking of herself. She goes on to talk about the scratched up floors she says, “Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars. But I don’t mind it a bit – only the