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Mental Illness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Yellow Wallpaper Looking at this from a psychological perspective, mental illness was not as well understood as the 19th century was closing which is when the author penned this. What we call mental illnesses today might have just been a nervous condition or Hysteria. Due to the lack of knowledge on various mental illnesses and treatment methods in that era the “rest cure” method introduced by Philadelphia neurologist-psychologist Silas Weir Mitchell intended to remedy an anxious mind for nervous conditions (Kirzner 438). This rest cure may have had the opposite effect which in turn propelled the patient into complete madness or mental breakdown into a total delusional state. The narrator of the story clearly has a pre-existing mental health illness exasperated by pregnancy and child birth. Nervous condition, as which she was diagnosed with, was just a symptom of something more serious. The main character’s husband, John, brings the narrator, Jane, to a hereditary estate for the summer with the intention of her getting rest and regaining her strength and position as a wife and mother. “There is something queer about it” Jane writes about the colonial mansion (Gilman 434). Inscribing …show more content…

John, being the man that he was, knew that the nervous condition she endured was in her head, but little did he know it really was in her head. It wasn’t something she could just turn off. He thought by implementing total rest and taking all care for her she could free her mind and get better but, he forced her to be alone with her eccentric thoughts. She turned to the yellow wallpaper and her journal entries for an outlet. She became fixated and started hallucinating with the pattern in the wallpaper: But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so – I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly conspicuous design

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In the Yellow Wallpaper, the Woman does not have this bond, and instead sinks further into her own nightmarish fantasy. As a child, the woman had an active imagination as she writes, “I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store” (Gilman 135). In her isolation, she is unable to do almost anything, and the only thing she can do entertain herself with her imagination. Her isolation causes her to see women in the wallpaper as she writes, “ The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!”(143).

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She proceeds to explain the contributing factors of the narrator succumbing to her “disease” of hysteria which was isolation from social interaction and the restriction of her own thoughts. She points out that the narrator is confined to a simple square room with nothing to offer in terms of mental health therapy. The narrator’s lack of the ability to interact with anything or anyone leads to infatuation with the wallpaper, which turns out to be “the

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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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At the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman writes of her husband’s diagnosis for her illness saying, “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-- a slight hysterical tendency-- what is one to do?”(Lynch para.

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” narrative moves beyond a “nervous depression” (376) matter, it operates around John imposing his own personal opinions, half hazard physician’s diagnosis, and furthermore, his overall arrogance that he

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The Insane Cure Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” provides insights into the harsh societal expectations put on women during the 19th century. Set during a time when women were expected to be only housewives and mothers, the short story illustrates the invalidation faced by many women who were denied proper care for their struggles. During the 1800s, mental illnesses were not quite understood, and the mental health issues of women lacked even more understanding. A cure, created by male physicians, known as the “rest cure” was commonly prescribed to women dealing with any type of mental illness. This cure tried to guide women back into the “proper” place in society by forcing them to focus on only their husbands

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She starts to see hallucinations as movement and the form of a woman appears in the wallpaper. “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 212). The narrator believes she sees a woman trapped behind all the designs in the wallpaper and she wants nothing more than to get her

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In the story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the narrator, seems to be going “crazy” as time goes on. John her husband does not believe she is sick, the woman claims that she is sick. Her husband claims that she has mass hysteria and tells her to rest. She takes phosphates, tonics, and ordered to rest until she is well again. However, this “sickness” that she has is not of the physical but of the mental.

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This suggests that maybe she did have nervous depression at the start, but being cut off from the world and others has changed her mental state. Society has an impact on our truth concerning ourselves and others, just as the seclusion and wallpaper had an impact on her own personal truth and the world around her. Magazines, models, social media, and other subtle influences that society has to offer forces people to see themselves and others in a different light than they would if they were not exposed to them. This book may have taken a totally different route had this woman not spent all her time locked up in a room, examining the wallpaper.

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Ironically, writing about the walls keeps her grounded, yet leads to her madness. The shadows from a window above Jane’s bed, fueled by her imagination, fashion themselves to look like tiny women. The wind and normal flow of nature cause these images to seem animate. As the summer ends, she becomes obsessed with figuring the wallpaper out.

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Also, keep in mind that during this time (late 1800’s) that women who suffered any kind of mental illness was often given no medical help, instead often being prescribed a “Rest Cure”; which is a period in which a patient will do absolutely nothing. Doctors used to believe that the non-stimulation of the brain would help and aid in its recovery, like how a “Rest Cure” was prescribed to the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper. The room our narrator stayed in shares many similarities to a prison, having solid colored wallpaper, bars on the windows, and told not to move read or write (our narrators favorite hobbies). This is one of the first signs of oppression that will be shown throughout the short story. The narrators husband John, who is a doctor, recommends that his wife does nothing to stimulate her brain such, as writing; and when the narrator tries to convey to the John that distractions will help, her opinion is simply ignored.

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This physical entrapment is enforced by the narrator's husband, a physician attempting to cure her hysteria and post-partum depression using the now-disgraced “rest cure”. Throughout the short story, the narrator descends into madness as a result of the isolation, with nothing to keep her mind busy but to track the pattern of a hideous yellow wallpaper. The narrator is not only physically confined within the room, but is also mentally trapped, for she is discouraged by John to engage in any mental activity including writing. This confinement within the home is a clear representation of the patriarchal oppression of women in the nineteenth century. In fact, the narrator is not the only trapped female figure in the story.

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John’s wife expressed how much she hated and could not stand the room, but John did not hear of it. She eventually started to study and observe the wall, and this led to her obsession with the wallpaper. She found freedom in the wallpaper from John and started to enjoy herself finally. The more she studied the wallpaper the further her mental state went. During the day she slept well, but at night she crawled everywhere and started noticing figures and a person trapped in the wallpaper.

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