ipl-logo

Mental Illness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

1126 Words5 Pages

The narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is suffering from some sort of mental illness. She has a recurring type of nervous depression. Her husband, John, tells her that she is fine and must rest. They went to a summer house where the narrator is forced to stay upstairs in their room until she gets better, but there is a disturbing wallpaper in the room that the narrator can not get over. Little does the husband know, but the wallpaper is driving his wife into more madness. The woman begins to see herself trapped in the wallpaper, and she eventually has a mental breakdown where she rips the paper off of the wall in order to free herself. This comes as a shock to the husband because he faints at the sight of …show more content…

At this time, women were not allowed to vote.They were expected to get married at a young age and produce children. Many women were housewives, but if needed to work they would teach, nurse, or clean. It was just then that it was popular for women to be educated. This way of life and thinking towards women had an effect on the story. The husband thought this way towards his wife. Whenever the narrator tells John that she is sick, he does not believe her. “John laughs at me” (Gilman 655). John was a doctor, but he felt no sense in treating her because he thought that she did not know what she was talking about. When John decided this, there was nothing that the narrator could do. “Women then, became professional patients. They lost not only their control over the diagnosis of their own illness, but also their control over the prescriptions” (Kautz 82). Also, she had a friend who had a similar issue, but every doctor she met with all turned her away thinking nothing was wrong. At this point, she had to listen and obey anything type of help he …show more content…

In society today, it is deemed terrible what he did, but due to the way the world thought back then it seems appropriate. During this time period, the husband makes the decision in the marriage; the wife respects any decision he made even if she did not agree with it. John prescribes her with basic medicine and will not allow her to work. He leaves her in the house all day and she stays in the bedroom. Here she looks out the window and sees all the people and even sees her husband walking. She writes down her thoughts, but quickly her husband tells her to stop writing because John thinks “that with her imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies” (Gilman 658). Since she is forced to stay in her room, the narrator quickly becomes obsessed with wallpaper and begins to see a women trapped in the paper. This eventually drives her over the edge and causes her to rip off the paper. By ripping off the paper, this releases a sort of “demon” inside of her that has caused this

Show More
Related
1175 Words | 5 Pages

The narrative begins when the narrator and her husband, John, rent a colonial estate for the summer after the wife gives birth to her daughter. John is a doctor; he diagnoses the narrator, who is his wife, with "nervous depression" and prescribes a "rest cure. " This prescription includes a strict rest and seclusion routine in a room with yellow wallpaper, which the narrator dislikes from the beginning of the isolation. The rising action in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" follows the narrator's growing passion for the yellow wallpaper in the room where she is trapped. She becomes obsessed with the pattern that made her imagine a lady trapped behind it and wants to free her.

Read More
483 Words | 2 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” narrates an ill and depressed wife slowly plummeting into insanity as she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper she hates. Gilman reveals the theme of self-isolation and its dire effects by displaying the narrator’s progressive unstable mental state throughout the story by developing the narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper, her inferiority to her husband, and how the wallpaper parallels the narrator. Gilman develops the narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper later in the story, contradicting the narrator’s distasteful attitude towards it early in the story. “I never saw a worse paper in my life.”

Read More
965 Words | 4 Pages

Being a good husband is not about just providing for your family. In the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Narrator is the wife of John, a physician of the Victorian Era. John doesn't think that the narrator is sane. In that era insane people were sent to an asylum and tortured until they died or worse “cured”. This is causing John to lock her up and “treat” her, personally.

Read More
808 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the story, the narrator progressively goes insane. Readers can see that her confinement both mentally and physically plays a role in this behavior (physically John will not let her leave the room, mentally John will not let her express herself). The narrator believes that ripping the wallpaper can set the woman on the wall free. The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get

Read More
141 Words | 1 Pages

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gillman represents the narrator, showing how she becomes defeated throughout her own personal journal. She first becomes paranoid and distrustful towards her husband, john. Then she begins to have hallucinations towards the yellow wallpaper of the room that she is currently staying. Lastly she lets her own severe mental breakdowns take control over her. According to Calum A. Kerr, “The story continues with the introduction of the narrators husband as a physician of high standing and the fact she is sick with what her husband claims as temporary nervous depression.

Read More
1328 Words | 6 Pages

We see conflict between wife and husband due to the narrator’s husband not really believing she is ill at all. The narrator reveals through her journal that she becomes tired easily and is miserable most of the time. It is quite possible that the narrator suffers from depression and this type of mental illness was not fully understand back then. The author of this short story wrote in an article that she had suffered from somewhat the same condition and she was given the same treatment the narrator was given (Why I Wrote). John, the husband, clearly perceives this illness of his wife as not serious at all and thus does not believe his wife when she argues for different treatment.

Read More
1659 Words | 7 Pages

Because of her husband’s constant patronization and misjudgment in the name of helping her, the narrator is reduced to a child-like state and is unable to stand up for herself without disobeying her husband; therefore, she retreats into an even worse state of mental health where she feels she is finally free. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator receives a great deal of mental and physical restraints in an attempt to cure her of her post partum depression. Instead of curing her, these mental restraints end up worsening her condition and driving her insane. Throughout the story, the narrator makes subtle notes of the unfair and demeaning expectations in a typical marriage.

Read More
791 Words | 4 Pages

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) follows a women’s slow spiral into complete madness. The narrator and her husband rent a small house for the summer and the husband locks the narrator away because she is suffering with a mental illness. She slowly spirals out of control believing that the wallpaper in her bedroom is haunted and begs he husband to tear it down but he refuses. At the end of the story she is driven to complete madness and she takes and axe and proceeds to tear down the paper. The first-person perspective of the “Yellow Wallpaper” plays a critical role in the story because of its contribution to building suspense, the internal conflict between the narrator and her own mind and finally the indirect

Read More
665 Words | 3 Pages

He didn’t believe she had a reason to be depressed and was simply stressed. The narrator speaks of her husband’s disbeliefs in the opening paragraphs. “You see he does not believe I am sick… assures friends and relatives there is really nothing the matter with one…” The narrator knows she is sick, but, her husband does not believe in her sickness because she has no signs. Postpartum wasn’t known of until the 19th century when women actually spoke of their symptoms.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

This causes her illness to get progressively worse, and starts the writing of her secret journal in which she writes about the house until she is interrupted by John. The narrator then sneaks the journal again and writes that her family had just visited and left her tired. After this, her writing becomes obsessive with the yellow wallpaper and she writes that she sees a sub-pattern within the wallpaper. She says this pattern is a woman stooping down and creeping around the room. The narrator then goes to the point of ripping wallpaper off the wall to release the woman and when her husband comes in through the locked door, he sees her condition and faints so the narrator has to “creep over him every time”

Read More
678 Words | 3 Pages

The wallpaper and women behind the paper become metaphoric for their marriage as the women “get through and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down and make their eyes white (Gilman 370)!” Jane drowned in her marriage as John directed her in all aspects in life, that cut off her air supply to forever become a floating figure in her ocean of life. She struggled with the stifled freedom of expression by not being able to express her troubles due to her marriage, therefore her actions

Read More
617 Words | 3 Pages

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by, American novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This story was written during a time where men and women weren't treated equally, and in the case of mental illness, some women didn't get proper treatment they needed so they would end up getting worse then better. In this short story, that is exactly what happens. This story is about a woman named Jane, who has some sort of mental illness, and her husband John, a Physician, rents out a Colonial mansion for the summer so she can get better by having solitude and just needs to not do anything strenuous, that includes writing, which is one of her passions. She even says, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Read More
1458 Words | 6 Pages

John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable. The narrator has no say in even the details of her life, thus causing her to develop an obsessive nature, the only place she can have some control and exercise the power of her

Read More
679 Words | 3 Pages

The main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the author herself, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an account of how she felt struggling with mental illness. Charlotte's husband John, a prominent physician didn't believe that Charlotte was sick that she was suffering from nervous depression; therefore, the best courses

Read More
637 Words | 3 Pages

While the narrator is aware of extent of her illness, her husband “does not believe [she is] sick!” (Gilman 14). Although he is a physicians, John does not believe his own wife when she tells him he is ill. Despite the narrator’s personal belief of her condition, her husband projects his own opinion as the right one. When John “assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency-” the narrator loses her credibility as a patient because her husband is a doctor and knows best (Gilman 16-18).

Read More

More about Mental Illness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Open Document