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Literary Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper

812 Words4 Pages

Sarah Harrison
Ms. Caine
English II
Feb 10, 2023
Literary Analysis Essay From lobotomies to psychotherapy to drug medication, the treatment for mental health has worn many faces. In centuries past, the treatments for and understanding of women’s mental health has varied greatly. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson is set in the late 19th century and details a young woman’s descent into insanity. She is prescribed rest in an isolated house in the country-side and is dismissed by all those around her, most notably and repeatedly by her husband. The diary recounts her treatment’s failings and her suffering. The time period’s customary view of women along with the sexist treatment they received for their mental health issues led …show more content…

Said husband is condescending towards her, calling her “little girl” and speaking to her as if she is an ignorant child (p 6). The narrator is viewed to be incapable of making her own decisions and this stifling treatment significantly contributes to her mental decline. What was arguably her closest relationship in the text was not equal, exemplified by the quote: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage (p 1). In the time period, it was not unusual for the husband to hold contempt and regularly mock their wife’s thoughts and opinions. This sets the scene and characters for the rest of the story, foreshadowing how her mental state will suffer under her husband’s care because of her lack of …show more content…

The figure she sees behind the wallpaper is “all the time trying to climb through” and the woman laments the inescapable nature of the wallpaper, saying “But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so;” (p 8). The woman trapped behind the wallpaper symbolizes all women who are imprisoned in marriages, families, and societal expectations. The figure behind the wallpaper that looks “like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” symbolizes how the narrator is trapped in her own life and home (p 6). By ripping apart the paper and freeing herself, she realizes the situation so many women are trapped in: “There are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” (p 10). This sexism experienced by the narrator crushed any bit of blossoming individualism and slowly killed all who encountered it. By treating women as less than, society created an environment where women did not receive the help they

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In the beginning of the story, the narrator writes, “You see he does not believe I am sick!” (647). The author knows she has slight depression, but her case is not serious enough to deserve this type of treatment. The treatments consist of locking her away in a room to rest with no working, and not even writing. The narrator secretly keeps a journal of her daily activities and this shows the serious transition into her

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson demonstrates how society treated women and where women's mental health was during this time period. Women during this time period were expected to submissively obey their husbands while running the household. This story also highlights the idea of women being mentally unstable and not being able to find themselves ,Charlotte uses symbols to connect the two ideas together to express society and patriarchy as a whole. Throughout the story there were many instances where the husband tried to inject his ideas and rules on his wife resulting in her losing her mind.

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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

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This was the case because society understood then that the “physician is the quintessential man” whose words “[represent] institutional authority” and must “reflect reality” (Ford 2). As such, when the doctors enforced ideas like women’s hysterical nature and attributed their mental illnesses to these biases, many women like Jane went undiagnosed and were put under treatments that only intensified their illnesses. In terms of mental health, reality and forms of treatment were determined by the men who continued to play into the oppression of women. In all, with the emotional first-person point of view and characterization of dominant figures, Gilman illustrates how women’s mental disorders were overlooked and the overall structure of how mental health was influenced by those with power. In conclusion, Charlotte Perkins Gilman has put on display both the complex gender discrimination and the unique struggles women faced with mental health stigmas throughout the end of the 1800s and early

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