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Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Mental illness, also called mental health disorder, alludes to a condition that affects your mood, thinking, and behavior. Specific symptoms of mental health disorders, for example, are depression, social withdrawal, and extreme feelings of fear. In the Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator's mental illness is called nervous exhaustion, which is when someone is stressed for too long. In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator's husband did not listen to the narrator when she said she was sick and was not getting better. In addition, the narrator's state of mind was deteriorating. Also, the narrator never spoke out, making it hard to get help. Mental illness should be taken more seriously and should be spoken out more. One reason mental illness …show more content…

The narrator's mental capacity was stagnating from the beginning of the story to the end and people in the story thought she was fine but really, she was going insane. One way her mind collapsed was when the Fourth of July was over, and she was getting attracted to the wallpaper. This story claims, “I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.” (pg. 461). In the story, the wallpaper symbolizes her sickness so if she's getting attracted to the wallpaper that means she's attached to her sickness which explains her mind is worsening. In addition, the narrator explains that the wallpaper has a “woman stooping down creep about behind that pattern.” (pg.463). This explains how she's starting to see something that is not physically there and that she is starting to imagine things. Also, the narrator states that the wallpaper is old foul yellow and has a peculiar odor (pg.465). This statement explains how she explains her mental capacity by inferring that her mind is rotten and that it's dying. The narrator shows us how she is feeling and that her intellect is decreasing and that she needs …show more content…

According to The Yellow Wallpaper, it states, “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put this away—he hates to have me write a word.” (pg. 459). The narrator is scared to speak up about the room even when the children say they hated that room and scared to even be writing when her husband comes near her. In addition, the only way she was able to speak out was when she was writing in her journal or dairy. However, if she had spoken out to someone else, she would probably have been able to get the necessity to get

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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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462 Words | 2 Pages

The narrator is disgusted and repelled by the wallpaper, originally describing the wallpaper as “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin,” but as the story progresses her hatred turns into an obsession. The narrator sees figures with the pattern of the wallpaper and starts to stay up at night to analyze what she is seeing. One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it, which her actions can be described as delusional to a normal eye, yet to a “discerning eye” the reader can infer that the figure the narrator describes behind the wallpaper is the narrator herself and her way of expressing how she feels trapped as she states “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get

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496 Words | 2 Pages

The protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is put into a room alone, isolated from the outside world with nasty wallpaper, a little table, and a bed. The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was admitted to the room because of postpartum depression. The woman says that life is “much more exciting now than it used to be.” When she made this statement it was after she quite literally lost herself and went crazy running around the room and examining the walls deeply. Knowledge of mental health and illness at that time was little to none leading to this very poor way of

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480 Words | 2 Pages

In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The narrator develops an uncontrollable obsession with this yellow wallpaper as she is deemed crazy and is confined to a large nursery room where she is constantly being medicated and forced to rest. Throughout the story she writes in her secret journal where in each entry she describes her feelings towards both John and the yellow wallpaper. In the beginning she has a very negative attitude against the wallpaper and is constantly remarking it's horrible markings and it's very shade of color. Throughout the story however, her feelings dramatically change as she starts observing the wallpaper and each mark, and analysing everything from the odor that has spread throughout the house, to the hidden figure trapped behind the wall. Near the end of the story, she starts seeing more and more of the hidden figure and making out details of the trapped woman, but then goes crazy as she sees her crawling around the yard and then believes she is that

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611 Words | 3 Pages

Initially, the narrator is disgusted and irritated by the paper, claiming, “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (339). This reaction mirrors that of a sane person’s--fearing the unknown, they distance themselves from insanity and any iteration of it, seeing it as grotesque and shameful. Yet, as she spends more time in the room, she grows interested in the wallpaper and begins to investigate. She comes to the conclusion that: “I didn 't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (346).

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933 Words | 4 Pages

Another example of diction that highlights the characters deteriorating mental state is when she describes her husband as, "careful and loving", but "hardly lets [her] stir without special direction"(Gilman 2). This helps the reader understand the controlling nature of her husband and treatment, which contributes to her deteriorating mental state. Gilman uses diction here to describe the wife's perspective on the treatment and her husband's methods, and how they aren't helping to improve her mental state. Both pieces of evidence direct to the fact that mental illness isn't something that is caused by

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1096 Words | 5 Pages

The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

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797 Words | 4 Pages

She becomes obsessed with the patterns of the wallpaper, but she mainly notices a woman that she thinks is trying to free herself from the confines of the wall. During the day this woman is still, but when night time comes around, it seems as though the woman creeps around. Towards the end of the story, the narrator has a breakdown and thinks that she is this woman inside of the wallpaper, and begins to perform similar actions like creeping around. This meaning of this scene is simple cause and effect. Not only did she already have postpartum depression, but she is basically trapped in this house for a whole summer with nothing to do so she can heal.

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1008 Words | 5 Pages

However, we later see a shift in her feelings towards the wallpaper as she states that she is growing “really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper” and comes to a realization that it may be “because of the wallpaper” (Par 94) As her opinions on the wallpaper begin to change, the progression of her mental instability becomes increasing visible. She begins to build a relationship with the wallpaper and claims that “There are things in that paper that nobody knows about” (Par 22) her. As this relationship with the wallpaper builds, her sanity begins to slip, and the hallucinations begin in a somewhat minor manor. In her first mention of “the woman” she says that the pattern on the

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802 Words | 4 Pages

At first the narrator just see the wallpaper as a unpleasant addition to the room as it’s a “repellent, almost revolting… unclean yellow” (Gilman 801), and the

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1291 Words | 6 Pages

Psychoanalytic reading of The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the speaker seems to be suffering from postpartum depression or "temporary nervous depression." (648). Accordingly, her husband makes the decision for her and takes her to a country house because he believes that it would be good for her. The narrator is not allowed to take care of her own child as she was imprisoned in her room where she should do nothing but "rest."

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814 Words | 4 Pages

The vast majority of people wouldn’t give the wallpaper much thought, however the narrator becomes obsessed with it. To the narrator, the wallpaper is alive and becomes the focus of all her time. Her overwhelming lure to the wallpaper becomes obvious when she first provides a very vivid description stating “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” (217-218). As she begins to lose her grip on reality, the narrator beings to see faces and eventually a woman within the wallpaper. At first, her description of seeing faces in the wallpaper seems like it could be her mind making since of the varying patterns or just part of her imagination.

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562 Words | 3 Pages

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

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1155 Words | 5 Pages

Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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484 Words | 2 Pages

The woman was going crazy in her own world as she saw something coming out the yellow wall. The wallpaper had a bright yellow color that drove the narrator crazy and tried to peel it down. The woman was fighting with her mental illness as she explains her influence of her personal life, a woman’s right, and her mental illness. A woman in the early 20th century wrote a story, her story was heard about her mental illness and she had no type of support. The narrator of the story “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper” says, “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman

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