Postpartum Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1982. In this short story it was noted that the main character, who is the narrator, was in fact Charlotte herself documenting her experiences with depression. In this story, the narrator, was a new mother that had developed post-partum depression as a result of childbirth. Postpartum depression causes changes in mood, behavioral, psychological and cognitive abilities. This depression also may cause insomnia and can cause anxiety. Postpartum depression affects nearly 1 out of 6 women worldwide. The narrator’s husband, John, who was a physician could not relate with his wife’s internal mental battle with this disease. His “prescription” for his wife was simply restrictive

John continued to keep his wife subdued and restricted from society and Lyman wanted to redirect his brother’s attention away from the experiences of war. John tried to keep his wife calm enough as not to cause erratic behavior, but was unknowingly causing her to formulate erratic behavior in her mind. She was unable to contain her sanity and by staring at the yellow wallpaper, she was releasing her manic thoughts. She wanted to move around freely amongst society, but was ashamed to do so. She became the creeping woman that she saw in the wallpaper. She was free to move along the confines of the wall, though was not able to do so in her reality. Her postpartum depression was not allowing her to rationalize that her husband was confining her. Her constraints from her depression were giving way to outside confinement by the way of her husband. John, being a physician, saw everything from a medical aspect and was confident that restrictive therapy would somehow lead his wife to understand that she was not as sick as she thought. His believing that her illness was a mental type of exhaustion only required simple rest. The narrator was able to gain her freedom by way of the wall paper that she was surrounded by. Her husband’s treatment caused her freedom not to be placed into a realistic environment but caused her to formulate her own