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The Yellow Wallpaper Postpartum Depression

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The Yellow Wallpaper and Postpartum Depression What is postpartum depression one would ask from the 1800’s? It wasn’t until the late 1850s when medical professionals first recognized postpartum depression as a disorder. “Postpartum depression isn't a character flaw or a weakness. Sometimes it's simply a complication of giving birth” ("Postpartum Depression - Mayo Clinic"). Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses symbolism in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to show the different levels of postpartum depression one can go through (Gilman 792). She actually suffered from depression for many years and seeks help and was told to “live as domestic a life as possible, ‘to have but two hours’ intelligent life a day,’and ‘never to touch a pen, brush or pencil again” (Gilman …show more content…

Women were to be considered the weaker sex. “Some even compare the conditions of women in this time to a form of slavery” (Smith). Gilman shows this in “The Yellow Wallpaper” when her husband sends her to the room upstairs, “it was a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium”(Gilman 793). John sees her as a child that is why he placed her in the nursery room all alone and that is why is calls her “little girl” (Gilman 798). The bars on the windows show her incarceration as if she were in a jail cell looking to break free. The bars on the window are not the only symbol to show entrapment. The wallpaper design she starts to talk about in the story is a sign of delusion she begins to have. Delusion and hallucinations is to be considered a more severe “postpartum psychosis” ("Postpartum Depression - Mayo Clinic") She makes a statement that the wallpaper has “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes staring at you upside down” (Gilman 795). We can see she is beginning to hallucinate from being in that room for so long. She goes on to describe the wallpaper with big patches and “uncertain curves” (Gilman 793) She begins to see the all women in the wallpaper trapped behind all the designs trying to get her to join

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We today would look at Jane and would diagnose her with postpartum depression. The wallpaper seems to give Jane a sort of anxiety because of how much she focuses in on all the horrible factors of the yellow wallpaper. She was improving with her depression and went on to say “John is so pleased to see me improve! And said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper. ”(653).

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The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is staying at a summer home while her husband renovated their house. This house was also used to be an old nursery. In the nursery she was not allowed to go inside some of the rooms, however the room she stayed in had this yellow wallpaper that she disliked for a while. Her husband, John, also thought it would be a good idea to bring her to this summer house because she was ill. She had postpartum depression and it progressively got worse throughout her two month stay at the summer home.

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The Yellow Wallpaper The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, talks about a woman suffering from postpartum depression. The woman knows that she suffers from being depressed but her husband doesn’t believe her. Her husband is a physician, and she says that all she needs is to rest and just stay in a room.

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The Yellow Wallpaper is a story written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, and much depends on personal interpretation. There are many different ways someone can interpret this, but one theory feels more accurate than the others. The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman going through postpartum depression, because multiple times throughout the story her baby was specifically mentioned, the setting of the story is where many with postpartum would go, and her husband treats her like she is experiencing it. Throughout the story the narrators baby was mentioned, but in an odd way.

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In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gillman gives a real life example of how the inhumane treatments for postpartum depression genuinely do just the opposite of what they are supposed to. The narrator, which is the woman in the story, shows how her development symbolizes the effects of cruel postpartum depression treatments and how they transform women into something they are not. The narrator is developed through certain regimens of the treatment, altering her thoughts through journaling, and forming an unhealthy obsession with the wallpaper in her bedroom which eventually consumes her into believing what is not there. Tone is a very important element in this story. The author uses tone to demonstrate how the narrator’s thoughts change from the beginning to the end of her treatment.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman created a strong fictional character by using her personal experience with postpartum depression, which created robust insinuations of women as a whole. Gilman realized her experience was more than an individual happening indicated by when narrator noticed there was another imprisoned female. The Yellow Wallpaper symbolizes the denouncement of the treatment entirely, but as well as the anti feminist disposition politics which took place that left the women vulnerable. Gilman used a diverse vocabulary and many literary devices that helped increase the reader’s perspective on postpartum depression.       The hierarchy of John’s relationship to the narrator represents the gender equality and the fine divide between male and female during that time period.

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression in the nineteenth century is told. Since the condition, and mental illnesses in general, had not yet been thoroughly studied or diagnosed, physicians of the time had developed their own treatment, which the woman in the story is forced to take part in; the results are most certainly not what her husband must have intended. In the story, there are also several connections to the modern articles, “Rest Cure” from Science Museum and “Depression During and After Pregnancy” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. An example would be the easy exhaustion of the narrator, even though she is allowed to do very little in the

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Symbolism Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper One might know that Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses the wallpaper in the main character’s room as a symbol for a bigger underlying meaning. This is a short story about a young women diagnosed of depression and “a slight hysterical tendency”. In hopes of healing the narrator, her husband moves them into an old, ornate home for the summer and required her to refrain from any activity to calm her mind. However, instead of getting better, the narrator goes into a deeper level of madness. This madness is caused by her obsession over what she believes is animate patterns and a trapped women in a peeling, aged wallpaper in her room.

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Stevens, Lise. 2010. " Postpartum Depression." The

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In the story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman she writes of her postpartum depression, which during that time period was dismissed as “hysteria”. In The Yellow Wallpaper there are very evident signs and symptoms of depression. By the end of the story, the narrator becomes one with the wallpaper itself, this marks her mental breakdown. Postpartum depression during the 1800s was not even classified as such, they considered this to be a type of “hysteria”.

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"Postpartum Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper". Writing On Women Writers, 2018, https://writingonwomenwriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/postpartum-depression-in-the-yellow-wallpaper/. Accessed 6 Apr 2018. "Imagery/Symbolism". The Yellow Wallpaper, 2018, https://anahuerta.weebly.com/imagerysymbolism.html.

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Depression is one of the many mental illnesses that thrive in environments where relationships are not strong or sturdy. In the short film The Yellow Wallpaper, the main character, Jane, has been kept away from the relationships she needed to assist in her healing of postpartum depression. Without the relationship she needed from her husband and others, she began to lose sight as herself as an actual human being. Instead, she saw herself as a woman in the wall. This tore away at her already withering mind.

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” Literary Analysis The “Yellow Wallpaper” is a iconic short story written by Charlotte Perkins, a famous feminist author. The novel takes place the 19th century and deals with the issue of how women dealt with mental health issues, specifically postpartum depression. Back in the 19th century the way physicians dealt with women 's mental health was much different then it is today, back then they believed that the cure for depression was solvable by isolation and rest. As a result many women suffering from postpartum depression were forced into isolation which only made their situation worse. Jane; the narrator of the short story, is one of these woman forced into the rest treatment by her physician husband.

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Psychoanalytic reading of The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the speaker seems to be suffering from postpartum depression or "temporary nervous depression." (648). Accordingly, her husband makes the decision for her and takes her to a country house because he believes that it would be good for her. The narrator is not allowed to take care of her own child as she was imprisoned in her room where she should do nothing but "rest."

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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.”

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