Emily Dickerson asserts “Much madness is a divinest Sense– To a discerning Eye–” which incorporates the idea that people who are different are given the title “mad”. Madness is described as a state of insanity, demonstrating foolish or unusual behaviors, or having a mental illness. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author portrays a young woman who is struggling with depression and is driven to “madness” because of the failure of her peers to accept her condition/feelings.
The Yellow Wallpaper was written in the Victorian Era when a woman's role in society was to be a wife and/or mother, while a man's role consisted of being the head of the household and the wife was their property. Exploited within this short story as the narrator's husband is controlling and conformation to society. The narrator has no say in her health as she states “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?”, unable to confide in others about her state of well
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The narrator is disgusted and repelled by the wallpaper, originally describing the wallpaper as “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin,” but as the story progresses her hatred turns into an obsession. The narrator sees figures with the pattern of the wallpaper and starts to stay up at night to analyze what she is seeing. One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it, which her actions can be described as delusional to a normal eye, yet to a “discerning eye” the reader can infer that the figure the narrator describes behind the wallpaper is the narrator herself and her way of expressing how she feels trapped as she states “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get