Mental Illness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Mental illnesses have been taken lightly since the dawn of time and even until today, the topic of mental illness is controversial. Especially during the transition from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, the topic of mental illnesses was considered taboo. Therefore, little literature was written about it. However, according to Dr. Lynn Alexander, a professor at the University of Tennessee, when Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote and published her appalling short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in The New England Magazine in 1892, the response was a mix of horror since no one had ever dared to write about this topic, but also admirable in the way that it can be compared to the previous works of Poe and Hawthorne. The short story dared to challenge

The opening of “The Yellow Wallpaper” starts out with the woman and her husband in a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate,...a haunted house”(Gilman). The woman then goes on to describe her life with her husband and how her husband does not believe she is truly sick; only having a nervous condition. Since her husband is a physician, she believes him wholeheartedly even saying that she is “...glad my case is not serious!”(Gilman). There her husband forces her to dorm in the old nursery upstairs for her treatment, and there she discovers an old, faded yellow wallpaper. As time starts to pass, the woman has nothing to do because her husband told her to breathe in the clean air and rest as much as she can. However, with only the ugly yellow wallpaper surrounding her, she begins to take an interest. As she continues to observe and analyze the wallpaper, she picks out the flaws in the paper and describes her dislike in it by saying, “On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.”(Gilman). As more time passes, the woman begins to think that she sees a strange figure in the wallpaper but thinks that she is only overreacting and blames it her condition saying, “I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.”(Gilman). Therefore, initially, the woman is relatively

At the climax of the story, the woman has given to her delusions. One morning during her final days at the residence, she wakes up feeling refreshed like morning dew. Now that she fully acknowledges that she is getting better due to the yellow wallpaper, a false belief, she no longer feels any stress or worries. Instead, she enjoys her “new” life even saying that “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.”(Gilman) At this point, she obsesses over the yellow wallpaper and believes that she was the mysterious figure trying to escape from the binding bars. She used to want to experience the nature outside her room and explore, but no says “ I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.”(Gilman) As she firmly believes that she escaped the wallpaper, she desired to get rid of it before she had to go back inside. As she has successfully gotten rid of the yellow wallpaper, she triumphantly shouts that “"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"”(Gilman) Here, she confirms that the reality of her life