How John`s attitude toward the narrator in ‘’The Yellow Wallpaper’’ mirrors social attitudes regarding mental illnesses

He even becomes upset when she wishes to write, causing this story to be "composed" of writings she manages to do in secret.  John places her in the attic of the mansion, like a dirty secret, in what she believes to be a former nursery.  There is, however, strong evidence that the narrator is not the first mental patient to occupy the room - there are bars on the windows and gouges in the floor and walls; the bed is bolted down and has been gnawed on and the wallpaper has been torn off in patches.

She has been trained to trust in her husband blindly and sees no other way. He calls her “little girl” (352) and “little goose” (349) and states “She will be as sick as she pleases!” (352) whenever she tries to express her issues. Instead of fighting for what she thinks will make her better she accepts it and keeps pushing her feelings aside, while he treats her like a child. We get an instant feel for her problem in the first page when she says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that” (pg 346). A woman shouldn’t expect her husband to laugh at her concerns. Even after briefly writing about her condition she remembers her husband telling her the very worst thing she can do is think about it and follows his instructions. This is when she begins to focus on the house instead of her problems and the obsession with the wallpaper starts. She has nothing else to think about alone in the home; they don’t even allow her to write, which she has to do in secret.

Also, we can relate the woman in the wallpaper to the narrator because she is free to do what she wants because John is not there, but during the night she is locked up in her room much like the woman in the wallpaper. These circumstances in which the narrator was put under during the late 1800's would not have been an oddity, and therefore I believe many women just as the narrator did would have had problems go undiagnosed.

The narrator feels very imprisoned in the house and tries to find a way to escape it. During the narrator’s rest cure treatment, she has attached herself to the wallpaper: She would “lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately”(260-261). This was the narrator’s way of escaping the oppression she was in. The wallpaper often seemed confusing to her, but she was determined to figure it out: “I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself”(301-302), everytime John takes of her illness lightly, her interest in the wallpaper grows. This is a direct reflection of her loneliness and isolation from her treatment. The speaker’s rest cure treatment directed her not to do any activities that would make her think intellectually or imaginatively, so she is forced to stay isolated from people, books, and chores. However, as her loneliness grows intensely, she finds relief in writing, something she was told not to do. The narrator would often have to hide the fact that she writes when nobody's around, and when someone comes while she is writing she records “I must not let [them] find me writing”(141-142). The oppression the narrator has been put through has made her stronger mentally, she starts to become more and more possessive of the wallpaper and tries

It is also notable that the protagonist’s room is located at the top of the mansion and was formerly a nursery. At the top of the mansion, she is far away from everyone and everything and can only look out from her barred window. This is similar to the tale of Rapunzel, a girl trapped in a tower with no one to communicate with. The narrator’s room being a former nursery and playroom may also give insight to John’s attitude towards her, in that he sees her as a child that needs to be pacified and doted on rather than a grown woman that can make her own choices about her illness and its treatment. The yellow wallpaper that decorates the room is what catches the narrator’s eye, as she finds it unbearably

The short documentary Crooked Beauty, directed by Ken Paul Rosenthal, narrates Jacks Ashley McNamara’s experience in a psychiatric ward and how her time in the facility shapes her new appreciation for her mental illness. One controversial issue has been trying to identify the true cause of mental illness. On the one hand, most people may think mental illness is simply a biological disorder that can be cured with a combination of medication and doctors demanding appropriate behavior until it sticks in the patient’s mind. On the other, McNamara contends that mental illness is a misconception with a patient’s oversensitivity, where it is harder for the patient to ignore certain events than “normal” people, and their doctor’s textbook knowledge. In McNamara’s mental institution, the psychiatrists simply trap her in a padded room and prescribe many different pills to suppress her mental illness instead of embracing her differences or showing her how to use those differences to her advantage. In attempt to prevent those who are mentally ill from feeling the same anger and frustration she felt, she demands a change in the line psychiatric treatment when she says:

Furthermore, tremendous advances have been made in the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses in the recent decades. Nowadays, someone with a mental illness is treated with respect, just like every other person, because, in fact, everyone is equal. Society’s goals today are to treat and support the mentally ill individuals enough so they can live in

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story that surrounds many different topics. The narrator is living in a time period where women were looked down upon and mental illnesses were misunderstood. The narrator of the story suffers from post-partum depression and is recording her journey in a journal. Her husband, the typical man at the time, put her on “the rest cure,” as he believed that mental illnesses should be treated like physical illnesses. He brings her to a house far away from other people and makes her stay in the nursery. The nursery had shabby yellow wallpaper which sickened her, but intrigued her at the same time. The rest cure was basically confinement, both physically and mentally. She was deprived of

First of all, when the narrator is in her room, she sees the woman behind the wallpaper creeping her during the daytime. This shows that she is unreliable because of her mental health problem. This is one the most important part of the story because the woman that she sees represents herself being trapped in the room. Also, her feelings are not stable. In the beginning, she sees John as a person who takes care of her and loves her. However, the later in the story, the narrator seems to

            In order to treat this "temporary nervous depression," John isolates her from society and orders her to do nothing but rest.  He even becomes upset when she wishes to write, causing this story to be "composed" of writings she manages to do in secret.  John places her in the attic of the mansion, like a dirty secret, in what she believes to be a former nursery.  There is, however, strong evidence that the narrator is not the first mental patient to occupy the room.  There are bars on the windows, gouges in the floor and walls, and rings fastened to the walls; the bed is bolted down and has been gnawed on, and the wallpaper has been torn off in patches.

Her husband, John, a doctor, thinks that this is the best remedy for her mental illness. She agrees to stay at the summer house because she wants her illness to be temporary. The narrator also accepts sleeping in the nursery room, completely isolating herself from her friends and family. As soon as she enters the house, she immediately notices something is not right. She states,“I am afraid but I don't care, there is something strange about this house I can feel it” (Stetson 648). By agreeing to stay in the house, she neglects herself and suppresses her emotions. John refuses to let her do anything, including writing, which makes her isolation complete and adds to her total breakdown. He is concerned that her condition will get worse because of her thoughts. She describes that John is against writing by saying “but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Stetson 648). She willingly agrees to obey her husband and attempts to cure her nervous disorder, but as the story progresses the narrator becomes increasingly frustrated and infuriated within

However, she has to be very secretive because John and Mary both disapprove of her writing as an escape from reality. Jane grows tired very easily and when John tries to tell her she is getting better, she states at she is only good when he is around but when he leaves during the day her appetite goes away. Her loneliness and isolation triggers an obsession with the top floor of the house. Jane records everything in great detail about the bedroom she is restricted to. She does not like the furniture very much, stating that it is dull and the children that used her bedroom as a playroom made a mess of it.

Her husband, John, thinks that an activity such as writing may be too much for her. This can be simply seen when she says “There comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write” (Gilman 471). Another relevant symbol is that of the house itself. A house can symbolize a family, and how that house looks or is can show a families current state. Jane states that “-there is something strange about the house- I can feel it” and “I don’t like our room a bit…but John would hear none of it” (470).

The story is narrated by the wife of the of John, and represented as weak and foolish. John her husband is a doctor. He doesn't and of her suggestions or concerns about her illness in general. She contrasted his practical, rational manner to her more frivolous and sensitive ways. She was not allowed to voice what she truly felt and this was evident when she said, “There comes John, and I must put this away-he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman, 1892/2013, p. 487 ). Throughout the story her subservience to her husband was felt. The image of the woman she sees behind the yellow wallpaper represents image of herself, locked up within the walls of her room and societal norms. Recognizing her oppression, she also determined that she must take steps to change her position. She began standing up for herself when she showed disobedience to her husband and ignored his request to open the door. Finding the voice to tell him to get the key in the front to open the door shows how, for the first time, she was in control and she took pleasure in it. Then she is really set free when her husband walks in a dies and she crawls over him. That really displayed she was going against societal norms and was breaking new ground for women of that time period. Expressing her actual thoughts through writing helped her discover that she could be so much more than what

The closest village near her is “three miles” (250 Perkins) and the house seems to be haunted according to her “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, […] there is something strange about the house – I can feel it” (250 Perkins). Besides, the living arrangement's, John her controlling husband forbids her to write because he believes it makes her intense and slowly removes more of her privileges as the story goes on. She also writes to express her unhappiness with her new surroundings, specifically her room’s yellow wallpaper “unclean yellow […] strangest yellow […] bad yellow things” (251/259 Perkins) and the way she describes the wall “I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of” (254 Perkins). This shows that her brain gets uncommon contemplations which therefore makes her madness.