ipl-logo

The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

979 Words4 Pages

Mental Illness There are several important topics in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”Throughout the story the narrator is experiencing severe mental illnesses. The audience can see the build up of the narrator's mental health and the way it declines throughout the short story. Gilman explains signs of madness, depression, despair, and negative self worth. The narrator has nothing to keep herself busy since she is required bed rest by her husband (Gilman 571). She is emotionally sucked into the wallpaper. The audience can see how she projects everything she feels onto the wallpaper as a way to escape. She detaches and dissociates from who she is, and she has changes that are incredibly noticeable in her personality. The narrator …show more content…

The figure is trapped in the wallpaper which symbolizes how the narrator is trapped with no way to escape, this causes her to be angry and frustrated which leads her to insanity. Desperation starts to kick, in and she tries to escape through the bars on the window. She wonders if she could jump out of it but the bars prevent her from doing so(Gilman 581). According to Kathleen Wilson, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in Short Stories for Students states that this short story goes into depth on how this is an example of physiological realism, and it also shows how realistic some of the narrator's mental issues are, especially how women felt and how they were treated in the nineteenth century. While the narrator is dependent on her husband (John) , after conceiving his child he still belittles her, discourages her, and treats her like a child. Wilson states that Gilman does not romanticize John but makes the narrator portray him as controlling. John is why the narrator felt this way since he prevents her from doing any activities, which makes her mental health deteriorate. Gilman shows how physicians looked at mental health especially within female patients in the …show more content…

This short story is important to spread awareness of mental health and how there is still information to be learned and studied. The role of women in this short story is a big part of the story itself and it shows how people tend to not take women seriously in their cry for help and just push it aside as if they were seeking attention. This story could be graphic for young children and people who suffer from severe mental health disorders, it should be advised if you suffer from mental illness then this could be triggering. “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows how mental health can decline so quickly in certain conditions and has a very interesting plot with an ending that can be interpreted. It should be recommended to people who enjoy learning about mental health and for people who enjoy a story that you can get wrapped up in and decide how it

Show More
Related
2185 Words | 9 Pages

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 is a short story that explores the effects of challenging patriarchal and social oppression on a woman’s mental health. The story’s protagonist is an unnamed woman who is prescribed a rest cure by her physician husband, John, to help her recover from what he describes to be a “nervous depression”. The woman is confined to a room in their summer home decorated with yellow wallpaper. As the days pass, she becomes increasingly fixated on the wallpaper and begins to lose touch with reality. In the final moments of the story, the woman descends into madness, and her husband passes out after discovering the states she is in.

Read More
1452 Words | 6 Pages

To begin with, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also went through postpartum depression. This story, is about a woman who has gone insane by post-partum depression and a dangerous treatment. On the other hand, an analysis of the mother’s character discloses that this story is basically about

Read More
871 Words | 4 Pages

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story written in 1892. The story is centered around a woman who faces societal expectations, and how men controlled women’s decisions simply because men were superior at the time. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman demonstrates how the lack of self-determination can have a negative impact on mental health by showing how men controlled women’s decisions through the use of narration and imagery. Initially, the protagonist is portrayed as a woman who suffers from postpartum depression or a “nervous condition.”

Read More
1515 Words | 7 Pages

Mental illnesses have been taken lightly since the dawn of time and even until today, the topic of mental illness is controversial. Especially during the transition from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, the topic of mental illnesses was considered taboo. Therefore, little literature was written about it. However, according to Dr. Lynn Alexander, a professor at the University of Tennessee, when Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote and published her appalling short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in The New England Magazine in 1892, the response was a mix of horror since no one had ever dared to write about this topic, but also admirable in the way that it can be compared to the previous works of Poe and Hawthorne. The short story dared to challenge

Read More
776 Words | 4 Pages

Mental illnesses are one of the hardest things to portray in stories. These stories uniquely characterize them for the reader to understand what is really going on. This is especially hard in short stories. One story that shows mental illness in a unique way is “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This short story focuses on this woman in the 1800s and her journey of mental illness.

Read More
653 Words | 3 Pages

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. It is a powerful and haunting story that depicts the descent of the narrator into madness. The story's narrator is a woman who is confined to a bedroom by her husband, John, who is a physician. The narrator is suffering from what is described as "nervous depression," and John believes that rest and isolation are the best treatments for her. However, as the narrator spends more time in the room, she begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper, which becomes a symbol of her mental state and the oppression she feels.

Read More
1113 Words | 5 Pages

Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

Read More
1433 Words | 6 Pages

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story written in a first person point of view journalistic style. The narrator is a woman who is confined to a single room in a country house, because her husband, a physician, believes it will help cure her nervous condition. The narrator writes in her journal in secret only, for her husband forbids her to use her imagination in any way. The journal style of the story gives the reader an inside look into the narrators brain, and lets them get a more up front experience of her losing her mind. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", Gilman uses style and structure to demonstrate ones descent into madness by showing it through the narrator’s eyes and experiences, giving the reader

Read More
963 Words | 4 Pages

In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman represents how wretchedness is overlooked and changed into blended sentiments that eventually result in a significantly more profound enduring incongruity. The Yellow Wallpaper utilizes striking mental and psychoanalytical symbolism and an effective women's activist message to present a topic of women' have to escape from detainment by their male centric culture. In the story, the narrator's better half adds to the generalization individuals put on the rationally sick as he confines his significant other from social circumstances and keeps her in an isolated house. The narrator it's made out to trust that something isn't right with her and is informed that she experiences some illness by her own significant other John.

Read More
571 Words | 3 Pages

In the short story “the Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator, Jane who has just given birth becomes progressively more ill and depressed. Her husband John, who is a physician prescribes that she get lots of rest and fresh air so Jane and John rent a colonial mansion for the summer. Throughout the story John is one of the main causes for Jane’s deepening depression.

Read More
814 Words | 4 Pages

However as time moves on, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes more and more real to her, it’s clear that her mental state is rapidly depleting. Her first description of a figure in the wallpaper came when she stated that the wallpaper had a “recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219). By the time the story ends, the narrator had turned into the

Read More
1202 Words | 5 Pages

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.

Read More
562 Words | 3 Pages

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

Read More
1106 Words | 5 Pages

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, Jane, has postpartum depression. In order to cure this depression, John, Jane’s husband and a doctor, administer the rest treatment on her. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” through her personal experience. Along with writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” she wrote an explanation for why she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Read More
779 Words | 4 Pages

The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a brilliant piece of fictional literature. The tale involves a mentally ill woman who is kept in a hideous, yellow room under the orders of her husband, John, who is a physician. The ill woman is conflicted due to the fact that the horrifying yellow wallpaper in the room is trapping a woman who she must help escape, but the sick woman is aware that she must get better in order to leave the terrifying, yellow room. The setting and personification applied in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, allows readers to develop an understanding of the sickness of the main character faces.

Read More

More about The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

Related Topics

Open Document