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Mental Health Deterioration In The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Yellow Wallpaper Main Character Mental Health Deterioration
“Asylums. Electro-Shock Therapy. Skull drills. Pills. Exorcism. Isolation. Lobotomies. Many of the drastic procedures that have been put in place to relieve a person of mental illness are only successful in creating ‘vegetables’ out of patients, not curing their illness but making them ghosts of their previous selves.” (History Cooperative) In the Yellow Wallpaper the main character's condition deteriorates through the beginning, middle, and end of the short story.
In the beginning of the story the main character describes something that is strange about the house. According to the woman “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don’t care - there is something strange about this house - I can feel it.” (648) Little to her knowledge that idea of something strange about the house will continue to grow. The main character acknowledged that she has her hourly medications that she takes during the day “I have a schedule prescription for each hour of the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value …show more content…

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.” (654) While believing that something is in the house, she also states that she sees a woman watching her in the daytime “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.” While the main character states that a woman is watching her in the daytime, she also claims that she sees someone in the wall paper trying to pull her in, resulting with the woman locking herself in the bedroom and tearing the wallpaper down while her husband furiously and desperately begs for her to unlock the

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Paula A. Treichler from the University of Illinois analyzes “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its effects of the diagnosis given to the main character effectively in her article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. In her article, Treichler emphasizes the reasons why the main character was lead to believe her diagnosis from her husband and the other contributing factors that played a role in her hysteria, such as lack of social interaction and confinement. In the introduction to her article, Treichler gives the background of the story and hits on every area of importance. The diagnosis made by the narrator 's husband is highlighted by Treichler in her opening paragraph to illustrate the significance and informality of the diagnosis and its unreliability.

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During her time in the room she felt the room “at night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman 304). The narrator of the yellow wallpaper descends into madness to escape the cruel dominance of her society. As the story progresses the yellow wallpaper becomes a constant companion. She first dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but after closely studying the pattern “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” and after obsessing over the painting she finds bars hidden.

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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is treated for depression by “rest cure,” isolation from society, which affects her mentality causing her to become secretive, withdrawn, and insane. With the treatment

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The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a brilliant piece of fictional literature. The tale involves a mentally ill woman who is kept in a hideous, yellow room under the orders of her husband, John, who is a physician. The ill woman is conflicted due to the fact that the horrifying yellow wallpaper in the room is trapping a woman who she must help escape, but the sick woman is aware that she must get better in order to leave the terrifying, yellow room. The setting and personification applied in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, allows readers to develop an understanding of the sickness of the main character faces.

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