Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an ironic story of a woman suffering a slow mental breakdown caused by attempts to restore her mental health. She is forced to rest along in a room and denied any activity because of her postpartum depression. The story is somewhat autobiographical because it is similar to events that occurred in Gilman’s life; therefore, the author could be writing to show how she felt when she was going through the process of postpartum depression. Throughout the story, Gilman emphasizes a myriad of thematic ideas such as isolation, madness, oppression, and confinement. However, the most significant is the idea of insanity. As the narrator spirals into insanity, she begins to battle with her surrounds,

The narrator is detained in a room in an attempt to free her from her sickness. The narrator’s husband, a physician, follows this belief and forces his wife into a treatment of solitude. Rather than healing the narrator of her psychological disorder, the treatment only contributes to its effects, driving her into a severe depression. She is “sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery” thinking how “John does not know how much [she] really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” Gilman 395). Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, wherein she is locked into an upstairs room. Her condition begins to worsen because her exposure to society and people is limited and the yellow wallpaper is what keeps her from thinking about society and peoples; she is kept busy by it and, in fact, wants to stay until she is finished with the wallpaper. She says that “I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I don’t think that will be enough” (Gilman 400). Although she is isolated and not getting the exposure and people’s presence, the wallpaper is keeping her