Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates an example of mental illness seen in women in the late nineteenth century. Because of the time the short story was set in, women did not have many choices. Their husbands were dominant over them, meaning they were to obey their partner at all times. Most women’s lives in the nineteenth century are an aimless pattern. They work throughout their day doing the same thing they’ve done since they became a woman. Gilman’s protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is experiencing a form of nervous depression. Her husband, John, puts her on bed rest in their summer house. The narrator has never seen this house before and is astonished that her husband was able to afford it. The narrator describes

The protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is locked in a house by her husband for the summer. She is ordered to not leave the house or do any work to help “improve” her condition. The narrator believes that “Congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” (473). Throughout the story, the narrator becomes more insane because of her isolation, proving to the reader that her husband is incorrect about his solution to her mental illness. Because of this, the narrator dissolves into a mental state that cannot be cured. She hungers for freedom as her illness

The narrator writes in her diary how the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her every day seems as though it is coming alive, or rather someone is trying to escape from inside the paper. Because the narrator’s husband does not know about the diary, he assumes her illness is improving, although she accepts “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?” (473). The narrator’s husband rarely checks on her emotional progression and assumes she is feeling better because of her actions while he is around. He cares for her as a doctor, but not as a husband. Her heart has closed to him, and he cannot open it anymore. The narrator calls her husband a “young man,” showing the distance growing between their relationship. She is unable to communicate with her husband, so she uses the diary as some form of therapy for her to write down her feelings. The narrator continues to write in her diary how many of the objects in the room remind her of her childhood, and somehow take on some form of life. She describes them as if they were hiding some form of