Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

This story shows that the narrator has been recently diagnosed with a mental illness, therefore making the narrator unreliable. The illness she has, temporary nervous depression, which later will be called postpartum depression, gives her symptoms of anger, depression, nervousness, exhaustion, paranoia, and hallucinations. All her symptoms make the story inaccurate since it is only from her point of view, and throughout the story, the narrator adds to the story by showing the reader how unreliable the wife is through the hallucinations the narrator is having with the woman she sees in the walls and how her mental illness is deteriorating by the end of the story. If the story were written in the third person omniscient, the story would change

The way she narrates the story makes it complex and confusing since she is an unreliable first person. The symptoms she has enhance her personality and make her untrustworthy. In the story, it shows that she has anger and depression as some of her symptoms she says: "I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive... It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions," (Gilman 648) In this quote, it talks about how ever since her postpartum depression started, her emotions have been out of place, which is causing her to be angry and depressed. There will also be symptoms of nervousness and exhaustion throughout the story, as she says: "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous... I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press on

If it were third-person omniscient, the story would be unbiased towards all the characters, and the reader could see how John and Jennie truly acted towards the wife, but we would lose the wife's dramatic input in her writings. The story would show a husband controlling his mentally ill wife by not letting her have a bit of pleasure in her life she says: "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it." (Gilman 648) This proves that John is controlling towards his wife by denying her wishes by not letting her move to a different