The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

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

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

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