Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper

The brain is a strong but delicate muscle inside the human body. However, if this muscle gets overworked it will affect the overall persona of that individual. Depression or any other mental diseases are not diagnoses or setbacks that should be taken lightly. Back in the 1800’s and 1900’s medicine and the knowledge of the individuals that decided to practice medicine was not extensive. Due to medicine, not being as advanced as it is today, a lot of patients were getting treating improperly. The character within The Yellow Wallpaper is a great example of not only a mental disease but also malpractice. Although the main character within The Yellow Wallpaper may be a woman of high social status, the narrator goes mad for the following reasons: she is extremely drugged with improper medicine, she lacks autonomy, and her post-partum depression escalates. Some might say that the story of The Yellow Wallpaper is simplistic, however, it can also be viewed that the simplicity of the story is what makes it complicated and comprehensive.

The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” starts off by describing the house John had rented for the summer to the reader. John is the narrator’s husband and a physician. The narrator is believed to be ill. John believes her illness is no big deal and says she just has “nervous depression”. To treat this “nervous depression”, she is not allowed to write or go outside.

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, is a first person narrative told by a depressed wife, who wrote ten short entries in a secret journal. In the narrative, the wife’s physician and husband diagnose her with “temporary nervous depression” (Stetson 648). The narrative took place in the 1900’s when there were minimal treatments to cure nervous depression. The husband was a dominant physician in the story who believed that bed rest and the minimum amount of daily activity would cure the wife’s state of depression. The failed treatments to cure what was assumed to be “nervous depression” later caused the wife to lose her sanity, emotional stability, and mental focus toward the end of the story. There are a plethora of different depression stages whose symptoms match the wife’s, but the closest type of depression associated with her symptoms would be postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. If not treated correctly, postpartum depression can lead to a more severe type of depression called postpartum psychosis, which causes the patient to have suicidal tendencies and mass hallucination. In researching depression after birth, one may prove that the wife suffered from postpartum depression, which leads to post partum psychosis; this explains her symptoms and loss of sanity throughout the narrative; specialists in the field of after birth depression support this statement.

Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the story about a young woman in the early 19th century, emulates the ultimate form of being misunderstood since she suffers from depression. Therefore she is secluded from her society in an effort to be made “better”. Although the author has left the main character nameless, we can perceive that from the description of her she is based on the author and her personal experiences. Gilman, obviously, projects herself into this work, since she too suffered from depression and was forced to never to touch a pen, brush, or pencil again as long as she lived (Norton, Gilman 478). In this time period (late 19th century) it was expected of a woman to be able to keep up a home as a housewife and care for her children (Norton, Gilman 472). However, the main character of this story was not able to fulfill these duties therefore she is portrayed as “unfit” or “defective”. Although her husband tries to help her get the best treatment as possible as a doctor, his medicines do not help her. According to Gilman, “John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind—) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick!” (Norton, Gilman 478). Throughout the story, the main character tries to explain to her husband that she is not well since his medicines are not helping her, but in the end she ends up losing herself in the illusions of the yellow

The conclusion of the matter leaves us mentally drained and relieved at the same time, and even a bit humored. Of course, depression is no laughing matter, but perhaps the relief is that we, unlike the protagonist, have not gone mad. It is that relief that elates us. We are also left feeling frustrated. The husband lack of understanding of her condition, even as a doctor, and his complete ignorance is contemptible. If he had only listened to her pleas and allowed her to have company and stay in a better room, even if merely replaced the wallpaper, maybe she wouldn’t have descended into madness. Doing nothing but rest, and getting fresh air, is not a cure for depression. Failing to recognize the seriousness of the illness only makes it worse.

When left alone, only to stare at a monotonous and empty yellow wall, there is no doubt that one’s mental sanity would be significantly impaired. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about a woman (the narrator) who becomes insane over the course of the story. The narrator and her husband, John, went to a vacation house over summer in attempt to cure her nervous depression. This was intended to be a way to relax without doing much work. “So I take phosphates…and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again.” (131) Supposedly, isolation is one of the forms of treatment that the narrator can use to alleviate her illness. Describing John, she declares, “he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.” (133) She is basically treated like she is in a coma, and everything is done for her, and therefore is limited to staring at the wall. This is one of the reasons why the narrator begins to feel restricted and isolated. She becomes so jaded and enticed by a simple yellow wallpaper, that she begins to breakdown mentally. This isolation and loneliness was the ultimate trigger leading to her insanity.

In the beginning the narrator (a middle aged woman) talks about her house and her husband. She is constantly writing about the wallpaper and how she feels towards it. Sometimes she is happy to look at the wallpaper for an example she looks at it when the moonlight shines through her window. She hates the wallpaper because of it’s color. The wallpaper is a dull yellow and is ripped up in places. She hates looking at the wallpaper and being in her room. The nursery where she stays is not a great place the window had bars on it and that wallpaper that she really just does not like to look at. When she describes the wallpaper she tells you that it has a striped pattern and that it looks like there is a woman looking to escape. The antagonist in

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper shows readers the perspective of a woman with a mental disorder who must abide by the treatments she is prescribed by her husband John. However, John is unable to see how miserable she feels to be in a confined nursery. Despite having disagreements with her husband, the narrator has no other choice but to abide by John’s words even though it is clear to the reader that her conditions are not improving at all. Gilman’s choice to include the narrator’s descriptions of and interactions with John helps readers understand that mental illness treatments in the 19th century were insufficient and made conditions worse.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is written from the perspective of a woman who is diagnosed by her physician-husband as having “a slight hysterical tendency.” The story is from her first-person perspective of this “temporary nervous depression.” Her husband John loves her, but is condescending: “He is very careful and loving and hardly lets me stir without special direction” (648). He calls her

Mental disorders are like global warming, you can prevent it from becoming disastrous if you take the right measures, but it can be detrimental if it is not treated correctly. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman showcases the treatments that were commonly used in the late nineteenth century on individuals with mental disorders that had harmful effects. Their solutions at the time were to stop thinking about their emotions and not have much human contact, which society knows today that these methods would make patients’ conditions worse. In the scene where John finds the wallpaper taken down by his wife, the narrator, Gilman expresses the idea that the treatments of depression at the time was inhumane and actually made patients’ conditions worse as a result, which goes against the fundamental right to seek proper treatment.

Three words: equality, independence, and individuality. These are what would be seen in a college letter promoting its school. However, these words are a theme in ¨The Yellow Wallpaper¨ about how women typically did not receive any of them. Now, in early times, women were not viewed as functioning people of society, with them not being allowed to own land, possess a certain career, or even receive higher education. Women are still fighting to this day to be treated equally compared to men who still have privilege over women in more subtle ways in society. Society has always been unfair to women and how they choose to live their life, especially if it is outside of the normal standard that women follow. The 19th century was the beginning of

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1899. It is a story of the mental development of a person who stays in a colonial house with his friend, John. The whole transaction is written from the point of view of the writer: herself.

Postpartum is one of the most frightening and common conditions. Affecting roughly one in seven new mothers in the United States, yet postpartum is classified as a mental illness. Like most other mental illnesses, many social injustices define the quality of the treatments. While this is made apparent in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper". In this story, we see through the eyes of a woman named Jane, also the narrator, suffering from severe postpartum psychosis. While hiding the severity of her symptoms from her physician husband and their clueless family. Meanwhile, the characterizations of Jane help show how infinitely she suffers from hallucinations and delusional ideology, not a hysterical

Mental disorders are like global warming, one can prevent it from becoming disastrous if the right measures are taken, but can be destructive if it is not handled in the right manner. Author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” displays the treatments that were commonly used in the late nineteenth century on individuals with mental disorders that were detrimental to their well being. Through the scene where John finds the wallpaper taken down by his wife, the narrator, Gilman expresses the idea that the treatments of depression at the time were inhumane and in reality made patients’ conditions worse as a result, which violates the fundamental right to seek proper treatment.

Charlotte Anna Perkins grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. She lived a lonely and painful childhood, only to support herself up until she married artist Charles Stetson. Following her marriage, her husband put her into the care of a doctor for her extended periods of depression. The doctor never told her much besides, “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again’ as long as I lived.” After living this way for a couple of months, Perkins was inspired to write her masterpiece, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” After divorcing Stetson, she married George Gilman. After she made this change in her life, her pieces of work sprang into action like never before (Mays, Kelly J). “The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman told in the form of diary entries, slowly reveals the young mother's descent into madness. As the result of what may be diagnosed as postpartum depression, hereby providing insight not only into the emotional distress women faced before widespread acknowledgment and understanding of this phenomenon, but gender and social pressures that denounce mental illness. “This is an illness that takes away a woman’s ability to access joy… right at the time she needs it the most.” I think this quote from Dr. Katherine Wisner accurately describes Mrs. Gilman’s struggles.