Schizophrenia In Jane Austen's The Yellow Wallpaper

In this story, Jane, the narrator is diagnosed by her husband who is a physician of high standing, as having nothing more than a temporary nervous depression. John takes her to a house where she can rest and get better but the house has an opposite effect on her. Instead of getting better, she finds herself alone with only the wallpaper keeping her company. Schizophrenia is a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation. Jane is being diagnosed with schizophrenia due to her withdrawal from reality

“John's assertion that his wife's sickness is a "false and foolish fancy" must necessarily negate her assertions that she is not well, maintaining his authority within this hierarchy at her expense. Moreover, his prescription of complete rest, not only overrules her desire to write and to have company, but on a symbolic level, takes away her ability to communicate. Within his diagnosis, just as he establishes male above female, he also distinguishes between the real and things that cannot be seen. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was found to have no organic origin and consequently not viewed as a physical illness” (Kasmer). Jane is forbidden from most activity, John says she needs to rest her illness away. When she is moved to the top of the house, she is basically cut off from any communication, Jane becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in the room because she feels it has life and meaning to it. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (313). Jane becomes emotionally unstable at this point, making her mental condition worse. She becomes more and more convinced that the wallpaper contains a force that threatens the whole