Struggling With Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

For a long period, those suffering from disorders were not given the most adequate treatments. In fact, it was believed that those with mental illnesses were possessed by demons or were accused of witchcraft because of their abnormal behavior (Comer, 2014). Later on new solutions for these illnesses rise. Those with mental disorders would either get operations called trephinations (Comer, 2014) or were locked away in a hospital, which is exactly what happened to the protagonist of this short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. However, the protagonist was not locked up away in a hospital, but she was locked up in a room in her house because of her husband, a physician, believed this would help “cure” her depression. Unfortunately, his treatment did not the way he expected. But recently, changes have been made, and breakthroughs in the cause and treatment of mental illness have been discovered. Unfortunately, these discoveries did not come soon enough for some. Luckily, psychologists have learned from the mistakes of doctors' treatments. Her husband diagnosed her with depression, therefore he should have encouraged her to go out and do activities she highly enjoys. It would have been great if he spent more time with her or surround her with her loved ones instead of having her

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wall-Paper," does more than just tell the story of a woman who suffers at the hands of 19th century quack medicine. Gilman created a protagonist with real emotions and a real psych that can be examined and analyzed in the context of modern psychology. In fact, to understand the psychology of the unnamed protagonist is to be well on the way to understanding the story itself. "The Yellow Wall-Paper," written in first-person narrative, charts the psychological state of the protagonist as she slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia (a disintegration of the personality).

     In "The Yellow Wallpaper", a story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the conflict centers around the protagonist's inability to maintain her sanity in a society that does not recognize her as an individual. Her husband and brother both exert their own will over hers, forcing her to conform to their pre-set impression an appropriate code of behavior for a sick woman. She has been given a "schedule prescription for each hour in the day; [John] takes all care from me" (155). This code of behavior involves virtually no exertion of her own free-will. Rather, she is expected to passively accept the fact that her own ideas are mere fancy, and only the opinions of the men in her life

The main character was suffering from more than just a post-partum depression but possibly a severe case of schizophrenia. While in the confinement, the narrator takes the reader through her declining mental journey and how she is affected by the solitary confinement in a yellow papered room. She was psychologically affected by her mental state and the confinement away from everybody. Her mental state became a fanatical delusional survival situation for her freedom which led to her mental demise.

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

Since the narrator is left alone for most of the day, she allows her mind to go wild with fantasies and is forced to deal with her thoughts by herself. This ultimately chips away at her mental condition and makes her illness far worse. "I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." (Gilman 185) This quote

“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

The story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman who is very mentally ill on her vacation with her husband. She is suffering from “nervous depression", which effect her greatly on her psyche levels and reality. While she is recovering she starts imaging a woman in the wallpaper looking at her trying to escape. Her mind start to believe that the woman in the wallpaper is real to the point that she consume her very mind. The narrator illustrate that the woman in the yellow wallpaper is a representation of mind failing to the illness she has. The reason why is because she suffers from neglect, depression, and the insanity that warps her mentally.

The narrator (jane) suffers depression from the birth of her baby. Her husband (john) did not let her do anything but lay in bed and rest. She wanted to go down stairs but John did not let her. John tried to figure out what was wrong with her and told her that she had hysteria then gave her a prescription that has her rest the whole day but after a while she got tired of just laying bed bed not doing anything. The narrator was talking about the yellow wallpaper the whole time. She starts to see a woman inside her yellow wallpaper she thinks the woman is struggling to break free. Jane tears down the wall paper to free the woman jane’s husband comes to take her home, but faints when she realizes that she has gone mad.

The yellow wallpaper is about a woman who is sick or at least she thinks so and is told by her husband to stay in her bed and rest, which eventually causes her to go insane. She begins seeing something within the yellow wallpaper. At first she isn’t sure, but after days of staring she discovers a woman inside of the wallpaper. The binaries at work in this piece are light and dark or sane and insane. The main character is sane at first but as time passes she gets sicker and crazier. She loses touch with reality and begins to see things that aren’t there. The woman she sees in the yellow wallpaper isn’t really there, but her mind makes her think she is. She sees this woman trying to get out of the wallpaper, but she can’t. The woman finally escaping

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1892 clearly depicts the effects of mental illness factor of postpartum depression and the presumed cures for it during the time frame of the story. The author uses several literary themes but the most prominent are cacophony, metaphor and repetition. The lack of knowledge of the inner workings of the mind in the 19th century caused a lot of mental illnesses or imbalances including postpartum depression to go treated incorrectly and the patient worse off. The Yellow Wallpaper presents the tragic story of a woman’s downward spiral into depression and psychotic madness. Cacophony is employed to form mental imagery and establish mood and tone within the story.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows the journey that the main character goes through. Oppression, madness, and freedom are the three main things that Gilman’s character goes through. She described the way those three things signified the main themes in the story. Therefore, Gilman uses the themes to describe how the main character, describes her experience with the wallpaper. Therefore, Gilman uses three types of themes in this short story.

While at the beginning of the story the narrator didn’t seem to have a huge mental condition, as the story progressed her mental state worsened. The narrator is powerless and has always been controlled by her husband. The woman was diagnosed by her husband, a physician, and suggests the “rest cure.” In spite of her illness, he notes that they get away for a short time so that she can get better. He believes it’s the writing in her journal that is making her feel this way and proposes that she doesn’t write while on this getaway.

Like the above the paragraph, the environment of the protagonist, which is the yellow and pattern wallpaper room, effects to her depression. According to “the Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist, Jane, says: “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind” (Gilman 12). Jane shows the women from the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. When she shows that pattern, she says that they are the great women, but they could not become the hero because they are blockaded by the wallpaper. Though this, Gilman wants to criticize that the women have the weak political and social power, so the women could not unroll their dreams. In “Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.',”the author, MacPike, argues,

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is portraying a story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. The story describes the mental and emotional outcomes of a distinct old therapy called “rest cure” that was prescribed to people. Which is what their prescribed Mrs. Gilman with. It appears that she was writing about her own suffering that she went through in the year 1887, two years after giving birth to child. From the story, it was obvious that Mrs. Gilman was writing about her own life experience which can now be viewed as a clear reflection of the feelings of women, like herself who have gone through these same treatments. In her words, “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.” (Gilman,487).