Jane's Psychological Problems in Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper

The vivid descriptions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to bring the reader along in the narrators decent into a kind of psychosis. It starts mildly, with her describing the color of wallpaper as “repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 528). As more time passes she begins to see more things in the paper such as “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes start at you,” and for it have “so much expression in an inanimate thing” (Gilman 592). As the pattern and descriptions get more twisted, we get visual clues of the madness that is slowly consuming the narrator. The color of the paper even begins to become a physical thing she can smell descried as, “creep[ing] all over the house...sulking...hiding...lying in wait for me…It gets into my hair” (Gilman 534). In the end we get a graphic visual representation of her full psychosis

“I cry at nothing and cry most of the time,” says Jane, in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (21). This story gives the reader a glimpse into mental illness and the human psyche by telling the story of Jane. The main character, Jane, is an unstable woman that was put in a bad situation. She is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression which causes slight hysterical tendencies by her physician husband (Gilman, 2). Along with this, Jane exhibited many other symptoms predominant in other mental illnesses, such as postpartum depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia. He believes the best course of treatment for his wife is to move her into a isolated, colonial house away from people, or “stimuli.” This, however, only worsens Jane’s mental condition and further drives her into insanity. The fragility of Jane’s mind was driven to a breaking point by different mental illnesses and conditions she was put into. Although the yellow wallpaper was the major concern Jane had that she viewed as why she was not recovering from her mental illness, many factors added to the bad situation she was in which led to her eventual psychotic break. Three major factors that further deteriorated her mental health are postpartum depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and being treated like a child by her husband. This paper will research these three things that led to Jane’s mental breakdown and the symbolism of each.

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, which is also her doctor, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness. Everyday she keeps looking at the torn yellow wallpaper. While there, she is forbidden to write in her journal, as it indulges her imagination, which is not in accordance with her husband's wishes. Despite this, the narrator makes entries in the journal whenever she has the opportunity. Through these entries we learn of her obsession with the wallpaper in her bedroom. She is enthralled with it and studies the paper for hours. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the paper. The story reaches its climax when her husband must force his way into the bedroom, only to find that his wife has pulled the paper off the wall and is crawling around the perimeter of the room.

She has become so completely obsessed with the wallpaper that she believes it is alive. She says she can smell it when she is not there and she spends most of her time in the room with the yellow wallpaper. Throughout the second half of the story, Gilman starts referring to a woman named Jenny, who could possibly could be another personality living inside of Jane’s mind. In the last lines of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we are led to believe that it is Jenny who is speaking. Jenny is a person inside of Jane that is being “trapped” by John and Jane, according to Gilman,“Jenny” says, "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!(320)" We do not know whether her name is Jenny or Jane, but this line explains that Jenny felt like they were being trapped in the wallpaper by John and Jane. We cannot say for sure, but this possibly could be all in Jane’s mind, and since John practiced medicine, it is possible that Jane is imagining this whole thing, and she could really be in an insane asylum. In the ending lines of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it could also be possible that Jane commits suicide. We also could believe that she kills John as well. Jane says, “But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope-you don’t get me out in the road there.(320)” We could say that Jane or

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

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a detailed story of a woman named Jane who wants to be obedient to her husband as a result of the pressures of society in her time, but in the process, Jane descends into insanity because her husband is ignorant of what is really ailing her. Jane starts out seeming as though she is simply suffering from a nervous condition, but we find that that is not only the case. Though Jane wants to be loving and obedient to her husband, by following his guidance she spirals into an unrealistic reality, and therefore, becomes mentally ill and unstable. Jane wants to be a loving, submissive wife, but in the process, she becomes even more ill. It is not that John is uncaring or an ineffective doctor, but in the 1800’s, medicine

John, Jane’s husband, suggests that she not participate in any stimulating activity at all. She describes his orders in her diary “…we came here solely on my account, that I was able to have perfect rest and all the air I could get.” Since there is absolutely nothing she can do and no one to talk to all day, every day, she begins to get paranoid of the peculiar yellow wallpaper. Eventually, Jane starts to become possessive of the wallpaper. She states in her diary “…and I’ve caught him several times LOOKING AT THE WALLPAPER!

Most men do not understand a women’s thoughts and how hormones affect her mood. This is the case with John. He thinks that his wife will just move on from her distaste in the wallpaper and forget about how silly it is to fret over. John had hope that Jane would come out of her postpartum depression with a new outlook on being a mother and returning to her domestic duties as a women. Because of all her time alone in the room, she had time to analyze and find meaning in the wallpaper. Jane knows that there is “little principle in the design...and this [the wallpaper] was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry.”(1039) Her thoughts of the wallpaper represent how there is no logic, rhyme, or reason that

Her descriptions and obsessions with the wallpaper as viewed from her perspective, truly draw readers into her downward spiral to ultimate insanity. Readers follow her in her mind from a nervous condition through her mild subsequent pleadings for alternative treatment to eventually "creeping" through the wallpaper with her--experiences which readers grasp within a powerful narration indeed. Through her, and only her is precisely how readers clearly knew how she felt at the end when she says, "I've got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (330). Husband John fainted, he had no idea she had gone that far, but readers did.

The wallpaper represent how Janes feels trapped and is a representation of the depressive illness she is feeling as to how she represents the colour of the wallpaper and what it means as 'The colour is repellent, almost revolting, a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight'. Janes first notices eyes in the wall. Later on, she sees the shape of a woman creeping up in the wallpaper. This shows a metaphor of using the eyes as the first feature of Jeannie in the paper wanting to escape and be free. Jane ends the story after she tears of the wallpaper and creeps around the room on her hands and knees.

Placed in a room of yellow wallpaper the protagonist, Jane, fights the battle of nonfiction versus fiction; Symbolic Order versus Imaginary Order. John, representing social order by only following practical ideas, is in an uneasy relationship with Jane which shows the weak bond between her and reality. Given her isolation, the words that she writes at first constitutes her thoughts, then as her mental state diminishes, her subconscious starts to make up her journal, giving importance to Suess’ ideas that language is the key symbol of women’s inner experience of postpartum depression. Psychotic symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations appear to have formed, and were controlled, before the

Thus, unable to leave her house without undermining her husband’s orders and denying her desire to be a subjectively perfect wife, she is bound to the isolated summer home, left alone to spiral miserably into insanity. Furthermore, in addition to being literally kept in her house against her wishes, at the end of the story, it becomes clear that she believes she is the woman trapped behind the wallpaper when, creeping around the room, she declares, “‘I’ve got out at last, . . . In spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’” Throughout the story, there are noticeable parallels between her description of the woman in the wallpaper and herself, however she does not explicitly name herself as the woman until the end of the story. Perhaps the author used the wallpaper to symbolize how Jane was trapped in almost all facets of her life, and, albeit through madness, how she escaped from those

Hysteria is a psychological disorder in which the patient shows physical symptoms, such as paralysis, hallucinations, and loss of speech without a visible physical cause. Bertha Pappenhiem was diagnosed with hysteria by doctor, Josef Breuer. Breuer had given her a pseudonym, as “Anna O.” Her hysteria lasted for two years and for several weeks, and she was unable to quench her insatiable thirst. Anna’s ability of speech was reduced to the point where she was unable to understand or speak her native language. Breuer successfully treated Anna by helping her recollect forgotten memories from traumatic events. Dr. Breuer observed that Anna had states of “absence” in which she would mutter a few words to herself from thoughts that were occupying

These passages show that she knows something is off about the house/ family, and when she tries to explain this her husband does not give it any thought. Another symbol that supports the theme is the ugly yellow wallpaper in Jane’s room. Jane expresses that the paper “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (477). Throughout the story the line between

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman creates a character of a young depressed woman, on the road to a rural area with her husband, so that she can be away from writing, which appears to have a negative effect on her psychological state. Lanser says her husband “heads a litany of benevolent prescriptions that keep the narrator infantilized, immobilized, and bored literally out of her mind. Reading or writing herself upon the wallpaper allows the narrator to escape her husband’s sentence and to achieve the limited freedom of madness which constitutes a kind of sanity in the face of the insanity of male dominance” (432). In the story both theme and point of view connect and combine to establish a powerful picture of an almost prison-type of treatment for conquering depression. In the story, Jane battles with male domination, because she is informed by both her husband and brother countless brain shattering things about her own condition that she does not agree with. She makes every effort to become independent, and she desires to escape from the burdens of that domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is written from the character’s point of view in a structure similar to a diary, which explains her time spent in her home. The house is huge and old with annoying yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. The character thinks that there is a woman behind bars in the design of the wallpaper. She devotes a great deal of her