Examples Of Dysfunctional Relationships

Her loving husband, John, never takes her illness seriously. The reader has a front row seat of the narrator’s insanity voluminously growing. He has shown great patience with the recovery of his wife’s condition. However, the narrator is clear to the reader that she cannot be her true self with him. In the narrator’s eyes she feels he is completely oblivious to how she feels and could never understand her. If she did tell him that the yellow wallpaper vexed her as it does he would insist that she leave. She could not have this.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" tells the story of a woman living in the nineteenth century who suffers from postpartum depression. The true meaning implicit in Charlotte's story goes beyond a simple psychological speculation. The story consists of a series of cleverly constructed short paragraphs, in which the author illustrates, through the unnamed protagonist's experiences, the possible outcome of women's acceptance of men's supposed intellectual superiority. The rigid social norms of the nineteenth century, characterized by oppression and discrimination against women, are supposedly among the causes of the protagonist's depression. However, it is her husband's tyrannical attitude what ultimately

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins describes the story of a woman suffering from a mental illness during the 19th century. The protagonist (an unknown narrator) is a wife and mother suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband John, who is also her doctor, diagnosed her with hysteria and he decided to move away with her to start a “rest cure,” at a mansion, isolated from the village. The narrator was powerless against her husband, and he had the authority of determining what she does, who she sees, and where she goes while she recovers from her illness. Throughout the story, the author used stylistic elements, such as strong symbolism, to show how the mental state of the narrator slowly deteriorates and ends

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, already suffering with Post-Partum Depression, is further constrained when her husband John prescribes her resting treatment for her illness. John clarifies that she must lie in bed in the same, enclosed room, refrain from using her imagination and especially abstain from writing. This, in turn, forces the narrator deeper into her

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband has rented an old mansion in the country for the summer. John is relying on this getaway as time for his wife’s nervous condition to resolve itself with rest and medicines. As the story unfolds for the readers, it becomes apparent her husband, John, is dominating, and controlling. She feels somewhat doomed that she is unable to change her circumstances and she ends up as a victim, thus confirming the dominance of men over women during that period. Between the narrator’s controlling husband and the deterioration of her mind, she snaps and becomes completely delusional.

The female narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” almost immediately tells the readers that she is “sick.” Being a physician of high standing, her husband diagnosed her condition as a temporary nervous depression with a slight hysterical tendency. He was not able to consider a more severe underlying mental disease that can result to more problems and complications when left unchecked. In her journal, she stated that she does not agree with the diagnosis and has her suspicions that the medical treatment needed for this type of diagnosis will not treat her. Having the correct medical diagnosis is crucial because once formulated, it will dictate the therapeutic actions that will be taken to treat the medical condition. The Yellow Wallpaper’s narrator had post partum depression.

Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives the reader a profound look by using characterization at a wife who is attempting to overcome postpartum depression after the birth of her newborn. The woman thinks she is severely ill, but her physicians, (her brother and John her husband) describe the woman to have “a slight hysterical tendency” (Perkins 1). Her physicians think it is best to keep the new mother locked up in a room with yellow wallpaper and to have little to no interactions. The woman has no say in what she thinks is in her best interest to recover from her depression. The woman says “excitement and change would be good, but what do I know” (1).

John is an antagonist of the story. He feels he is doing his wife good; by locking her away in this mansion. However, the reader soon realizes, this treatment is only worsening her mental state. He is never home with her; he always has patients to see in town, leaving her locked in this house; alone with her thoughts. He ensures that she gets rest and fresh air to get well. To him, it may seem as though he is doing his wife good; by locking her away in this mansion. However, this seclusion she experiences causes serious damage to her mental state. Her husband has control over her that women

American society in the late nineteenth century erroneously entertained the idea that women were incapable of rational thought and needed to be taken care of as if they were children. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, suffering from post-partum depression and left to ruminate on her own supposed deficiencies, is forced by these ideas into a situation that intensifies her mental illness and creates the opposite of the effect intended by the treatment. The combination of her husband’s dominance as spouse and physician, and the presence of the nanny and sister-in-law, creates a situation in which the narrator is stripped of her roles as mother and wife

It is believed the narrator (sometimes identified as Jane) in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression after having a baby. Her husband, John, denies she has a “real” problem (Gilman 87). He takes

seems that John is very controlling and doesn't pay true attention to his wife. The illnesses of both the

John demonstrates the power of male to stop his wife’s complaints. John holds resolutely to the conventional lines of the marriage plot and produces authority out of a distanced and ironic critique of women diseases. Janice Peritz stated in her journal that, ‘’Author, Williams Howell, had nothing to say about the provocative feminism of Gilman’s text after he added her short story to his collection which caused Gilman’s story to be completely ignored’’. Gilman makes a strong statement about males in society during her time period. The men are portrayed to really see women as children more than as individuals. The dominance of men is undeniable, ‘’ He does not believe I’m sick’’. The narrator has lost control to decide is she’s sick or not, which is one of the most basic things a person can determine. The narrator stated, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression, what is one to do?” Gilman portrays that women ‘‘invented” their emotional illnesses in order to attract attention and sympathy of other relatives. It is possible to say that male physicians prefer to find any excuse not to treat psychological disorders seeing them unimportant and even “imaginary”. The typical male makes his wife a conformist by enforcing his

Their differences created the conflicts between them. John, as a physician, is very practical and rationalistic. He disregards the existence of anything that cannot be seen or felt and therefore does not believe that his wife was ill even though through reading her thoughts and emotions it was clear that she was suffering severely. The woman on the other hand, is very imaginative and sensitive. John believes that all his wife needs is rest and therefore her treatment is that she does no work and especially no writing. He felt that her condition would be made worst if she does any form of work or writing. The woman strongly disagrees with John on the type of treatment that he has suggested. She thinks that having daily activities, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and so she starts to create secret journal in an attempt to alleviate her mind and to prevent her illness from getting the best of her. John continuously suppresses her thoughts, feelings and concerns about her illness which portrays him in a sense as a “villain”. He does not provide her with the space or opportunity to try other alternatives other than the “rest cure” so that she might overcome her illness. The woman wants to write about her feelings and her conditions but she is not allowed and so she has to struggle to hide her writings from John and his sister. The fact that she cannot freely write and openly express her feelings to John strains her and drains

Before the nineteenth century, children had very little to no healthcare at all. Only the wealthier families could afford the transportation costs of travelling into the city for their child to receive medical attention. In times of need, such as the smallpox epidemic, most children were cared for at home by family and neighbors using “folk medicine”, homemade antibiotics (Hartley). In the middle of the nineteenth century, Abraham Jacobi began the study of pediatrics and his research led it to become a “medical specialty” (Mandal). The first hospital in the U.S. that was built for the medical attention of children was “opened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1855” (Hartley).

“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