Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper

What is madness? Over centuries, madness has been defined and redefined time and time again. Varying in definition among cultures and societies, madness has never had an absolute, concrete definition. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, the most common definition of madness today is, “The state of being mentally ill, especially severely.” During the Victorian Era, madness had a more dangerous definition, and for women, the only way to cure it was by complete isolation. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a prime example of descent into madness. Set in the Victorian Era, “The Yellow Wallpaper” focuses on the declining mental state of a woman in the nineteenth century, a time where females had no say in society and were seen as inferior

At first she is disgusted by it, she hates the color and dislikes the pattern, but there doesn’t seem to be anything strange about it. After a while, she begins to examine the pattern more closely and notices that a “…strange, provoking, formless sort of figure seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.” (Gilman, 7) At this point, her madness is not all that clear but it is becoming stronger as she sees the wallpaper having a sort of personality. The wallpaper no longer disgusts her, but it intrigues her instead. She becomes obsessed with it; she doesn’t take her eyes away from it and stares at it day and

Neither of the two have a say over their situation. The woman in the wallpaper cannot break out of the wallpaper and the narrator cannot escape the nursing room. Only for a time, the narrator studies the woman she thinks she sees in the wallpaper, but as her desperations for freedom grows, she starts to help the woman “escape” the wallpaper by pulling it off the walls. In the end, the narrator becomes the woman inside the wallpaper and she is able to escape her inprisonment. Compared to Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, the story differs in that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not a story about descent into madness, but rather a story about split personality and the nature between good and evil. In “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, Dr. Jekyll represents the typical and socially acceptable personality while Mr. Hyde represents the “bad” side. The story presents the idea that every human being has two personalities; a reasonable, good natured self and an evil, monstrous self. But Jekyll and Hyde, although different, is the same person. They share the same body and