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The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

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The Yellow Wallpaper

Spot the signs and know when someone needs help. A woman, slowly rolling into insanity. A man, John, pushing away all signs of distress. The narrator and her husband, John, do not have the best relationship in the sense that John can be quite controlling at times. John brings them to an old house. This house has yellow wallpaper in the room that the narrator and John are staying in. This wallpaper is disturbing but quite interesting to the narrator. Despite her continuous complaints, John refused to let her move rooms. It’s easy to overlook the internal struggle many face. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s text, The Yellow Wallpaper, relates to a Michelle Obama quote “Sadly, too often, the stigma around mental health …show more content…

Although her husband, John, refuses to recognize this. This can be seen when the narrator explains how he does not believe her. For instance, “You see he does not believe I am sick!” (8). Although stated by the narrator, it's showing how John does not seem to care. Another point arises, “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?” (10). This helps to show John’s perspective more clearly. He does not really think that anything is really wrong with the narrator. As he ignores the ever growing problem, she only gets worse. By him not paying attention to the narrator, she falls further and further into …show more content…

She reaches a breaking point and rips the wallpaper off the walls. She got to a point where the wallpaper was detrimental to her mental health. The text shows this by, “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper,” (220). At this moment it is apparent that the narrator is not well. This could have been prevented if John had paid more attention to her, if he had tried to pay more attention to her. Although it may have seen that the narrator could not have gotten worse, she got even worse. The text continues on to state, “‘I’ve got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’vd pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’” (265). This proves the idea that she had fully fallen into a pit of insanity. She has completely believed that she is trapped inside of the wallpaper and needs to be released. If more attention had been paid to her mental health, she might not have gotten to this point. Both quotes show how bad she has gotten mentally and how her being practically ignored by John negatively impacted

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982 Words | 4 Pages

The yellow wallpaper soon becomes sickening to the narrator which is expressed by, “it is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it!” (Gilman). Yellow is normally used to symbolize hope or positive thoughts which the narrator is unable to obtain due to the fact of being confined in the room. As time passes, the narrator becomes more and more obsessed with the wallpaper even believing there are people living inside which symbolize how she feels trapped and helpless.

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641 Words | 3 Pages

He brings her to a room with yellow wallpaper, a bed that is nailed to the ground, and barred windows. As the days progress the narrator is not allowed to write and she grows to hate the yellow wallpaper. She is disturbed by the paper and wants to tear it down, but does not have the nerve to tell him. She stews and grows fascinated with the wallpaper. Jennie comes to help with taking care of the narrator.

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894 Words | 4 Pages

She was like a child and John was her strict father, he wouldn 't let her do anything besides eat and sleep. Since the beginning of the short story the narrator has been treated as if she were one of John 's patients instead of his wife. For instance, when she wanted John to change the wallpaper he told her she was "letting it get the better of her" and "that

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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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1463 Words | 6 Pages

The male character, John represents characteristics of a typical male of his time, supressing his wife and disregarding any issues she conveyed. The short story portrays the deterioration of the female character’s mind. As the wallpaper crumbles away, so does the suppressing effect that male hierarchy imposes on women. This also leads to the narrator’s mind collapsing as she descends more into madness. The progression of the yellow wallpaper and the narrator, throughout the story, leads to a small win over John.

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1011 Words | 5 Pages

He is completely oblivious to her mental state until the conclusion of the story, when he sees the full effect of his oversight. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows us that maltreatment, particularly neglect and isolation can have diminishing and possibly drastic effects on a person with mental illness. John, who is a doctor, diagnoses his wife with what he deems “temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 317). From the beginning, John dismisses his wife’s mental illness and does not see the toll her mental state is taking on her.

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894 Words | 4 Pages

Obviously she’s being sarcastic. She does not like it when he does that. The narrator does not want John to laugh at her health. She wished he actually cared about her health rather than laugh. John continued to laugh at her health because he drove

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2062 Words | 9 Pages

She presents all the symptoms of classic depression such as major fatigue, hypersomnia and insomnia, and she has constant feelings of guilt every day as she expresses in her journals and yet John “fails” to see it. The narrator shows these symptoms through her writing as she writes “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time” (Gilman 5). Her journal is a cry for help, a cry for someone to listen to her that something is really wrong, but everyone fails to answer the cry. When she is told by John that she is most certainly getting better, she discredits him and even says “’better in body perhaps- ‘ I began, and stopped short…”

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856 Words | 4 Pages

Overtime, she becomes increasingly “unreasonably angry”(Gilman, 1892), grows severely afraid of John, and believes the wallpaper has a woman trapped within its pattern. The resolution occurs upon the perceived equilibrium - presaged by the growing obsession with the yellow wallpaper - in which the narrator seems to believe that she is the woman in the wallpaper, and now takes on the wallpaper woman’s voice, saying, “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane!”. The reader is shifted from one disconnect to another – where we previously were privy to the narrators inner most intimate thoughts, we no indication as to who she was. The inverse is now true, as we know who she was, but with no more access to her diary entries. We have lost all intimacy.

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1232 Words | 5 Pages

As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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720 Words | 3 Pages

She, on the other hand, doubts the necessity of such a move and wonders if the mysterious house is haunted. John reveals his superior attitude toward his wife by laughing at her “fancies,” a response which the narrator finds quite natural because, as she explains, one must expect such treatment in marriage. She even suggests that his indifference to her opinions on the house and her illness keeps her from getting well faster. Her suggestion turns out to be a fateful prediction. Against her wishes, John decides that he and his wife will sleep in the attic room of the house, which at one point may have been a nursery.

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961 Words | 4 Pages

In The Yellow Wallpaper, it is apparent that the narrator has not gotten any better. However, it seems that her husband, who is supposed to be improving her health as both a doctor and a husband is not doing so. In fact, his treatment is making her worse. During the short story the narrator reports that, “But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired”. This confirms the fact that John is not treating her condition, but her symptoms so that she has “proper self-control”.

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571 Words | 3 Pages

At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.

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1202 Words | 5 Pages

The narrator leads a fairly boring life. The only thing she seems to do all day is sleep, write, eat, look out the window and study the yellow wallpaper in her room. Evidence of this in the story is “I lie here on this great immovable bed - it is nailed down, I believe - and follow that pattern about by the hour” (Gilman 650). Another piece of evidence would be, “The color is repellant, almost revolting ; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (Gilman 649).

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562 Words | 3 Pages

(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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