The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Gender Roles, Mental Illness, and Miscommunication: Why The Narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” Could Not Recover With her ability to employ symbolic and thematic elements of vast depth, Charlotte Perkins Gilman has constructed an excellent commentary on gender roles and postpartum depression. It is evident that she was able to make waves with her writing in that it is still being used as a discussion piece a century hence. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman employs specific themes to portray the narrator’s conflict regarding the time period’s perception of mental illness, women’s societal and marital roles, and the gravity of miscommunication, particularly as it pertains to medical treatment. To accurately dissect Gilman’s portrayal of the

This is most clearly depicted when the narrator notes, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Gilman 482). Unfortunately for the narrator, the condemnation surrounding postpartum depression costs her her ability to be treated accurately. Ultimately, wrongful stigmatization leads to misunderstanding and closes the door for the communication that would be necessary for the narrator to be successfully treated. Moreover, in her essay “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’” Paula Treichler writes, “[…] her journal- in whose words the story unfolds- records her

Gilman spells it out clearly in the dialogue of the narrator’s husband; for example, “[…] you really are better dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know” (Gilman 486). The narrator’s husband maintains, throughout the short, an utter refusal to hear his wife, even as she clearly expresses her needs. Ann Oakley expresses this best in her paper “Beyond The Yellow Wallpaper,” “This paper [...] challenges the myth that health is a medical product and that the inequalities between men and women are easily removed” (Oakley). Healthcare, even today, can only be successful if proper communication is conducted between patient and physician. This is certainly made difficult in the presence of a bias against women, particularly one that questions a woman’s intelligence quotient. This difficulty would only be exacerbated by being conducted between man and wife, a clear conflict of interests. In the 19th century, gender roles created a disparity in both healthcare and