The Role Of Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

The yellow wall paper was written in the 1800’s during that time women were vastly expected to serve their husband as housewives, not given the right to vote, make decision for themselves, work and even make enough money to support themselves. The husband is a doctor, while the wife suffers from severe mental illness. This is a husband who loves his wife and taught he was doing what was right to get her in a stable condition but unfortunately he made her become crazier, due to lack of stimulation. The Yellow Wall Paper symbolizes slowly tearing the walls of freedom for women.

In the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, there are many of literary techniques that illustrates the theme to express the story. Irony, imagery and symbolism are some literary devices that is presented among the story.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of acceptance and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The story appears to take place during a time where women were oppressed. Women were treated as if they were under one’s thumb in society during this period which is approximately the 19th century.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. The story appears to take place during a time period where women were oppressed. Women were treated as second rate people in society during this time period. Charlotte Perkins Gilman very accurately portrays the thought process of the society during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written. Using the aspects of Feminist criticism, one can analyze “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman through the dialogue through both the male and female perspective, and through the symbol found in the story.

“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

Most of us are familiar with the phrase, "a healthy body, a healthy mind," which communicates that a healthy body will more than surely lead to a sane mind. However, in Charlotte Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," we are presented with the idea that mental sanity is brought forth by exercising the mind; by articulating one self's thoughts and ideas without repressions or constraints, particularly when the mind is already flooded with troubles. The narrator starts off with a sane mind, yet troubled by anxiety, a product of the restraints her marriage and overall social gender norms of the time have caused. Pressured by these restraints, her imaginative and expressive nature suffer and soon begin to accumulate, overwhelming her

Can you imagine being a patient in an insane asylum? How about not even being aware that you are a patient in an insane asylum? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s dramatic short story is about a woman who explains in her journal that she is in a vacation home accompanied by her husband, John, and his sister, Jennie. They are “vacationing” there because she is being treated for a case of a “slight hysterical tendency”, but by the end of the story the narrator has gone completely insane. The information given by the narrator is not completely reliable, due to her condition. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator expresses traits of a mental patient, and describes features of the other characters in the story and

There is an abundance of details in the story that seem to be written by a "mentally unhinged narrator". One of those details is when the narrator begins describing the wall. For example, "But there is something else about that paper---the smell!" (494). She goes even further in her description of the wall, "It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it---there is that smell!" (494). As the entries progress, her mental state starts to worsen, "Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move---and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!" (494). The mental health of the woman has obviously deteriorated to the point that she believes there's

Until the late 1800’s when psychoanalysis was introduced, there was little to no distinction between classifications of mental illness. The female protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Bartleby of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivenor” are both characters that seem to suffer from depression. Gilman’s narrator suffers from a ‘temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency’ that regresses into insanity and irrational behavior as Bartley is unmotivated, passive resistant and reticent. The regressing mental illnesses of the

Is insanity brought through artificial circumstance, or is it a natural state of being that the human mind tends towards? The narrator from “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a very deep character, psychologically and emotionally, manipulated by a society that creates artificial difference between her and those around her, such as the differences between men and women, and the ideologies of pragmatism as opposed to creativity. This is a mirror of the society that feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman found herself trapped in for her entire life. This novel is a commentary based on the neglectful state of subservience and helplessness that women were forced into during their time period. This realistic mindset towards the society of the 1800s and

In the 1800s a woman would go undiagnosed with depression to an idea of women having hysteria versus a legitimate mental health issue. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, “The Awakening” and “Trifles”, the undiagnosed mental illness is apparent. All three women are suffering from some sort of mental illness and due to the oppression of women during those times; the mental illness was not addressed. In the “Yellow Wallpaper” and “the Awakening” these are cases where doctors and men close to them didn’t try and hurt them intentionally, however due to lack of knowledge and psychological care mental health illnesses were a major issue among women.

I think the story I connected with the most would be “The Yellow Wallpaper.” As a teenager I struggled with depression extremely bad. Only since about the middle of August was I able to really feel free of depression. Struggling with this mental illness really messes with your mind. Being by yourself can drive you crazy, it can make you do things you will regret later in life. She was treated as if she didn't know what was going on with herself. But she actually knew what she needed in order to help herself. When I was struggling I tried to not let people know I was. I didn't tell anyone except for one of my closest friends. Instead of telling me I need to grow up and snap out of it, he told me not to go stay in my room all the time and get out and spend time with people. And I think that helped me more than anything else would have. People with a mental illness need their family around, they need their friends.

What will be the factor that caused one’s madness? Possible answers can be a sudden mental shock or the loss of something valuable. However, in the story of “ The yellow wall-paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the madness of the narrator, an upperclass woman, is caused by the environment she lives in. This essay will explain in detail about how do those social and living settings resulted in the madness of the narrator step by step. The narrator’s emotion and thoughts are fully effected by how John, her husband, treat her. Start from the very beginning, the narrator expresses in her journal that his husband, a physician “ does not believe (she) is sick”, (Gilman 647) and so is her brother. What it tells us is that John and the brother,

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The protagonist undergoes many hardships throughout the story, Hardships such as the mistreatment that the main protagonist has to face, also how the story portrays the stereotypical behaviour that society shows (i.e., man does everything while the woman does nothing), lastly the psychoanalytic that Sigmund Freud has shown through is work. Firstly, The story shown us that the main protagonist had to experience a lot of mistreatment, with John her husband not allowing her to write as freely has she pleased, or how the main protagonist disliked her room and wanted to leave, John did not listen to her and let her live in the room. Quotes such as, “There comes John. And I must put

When I read “The Yellow Wallpaper” I didn’t know what to think of it. At first I thought the husband was trying to kill his wife by abandoning her in that big old house, but he was actually trying to help her get better. It appeared that the narrator was suffering from some type of mental disorder and the only way to recover was to let her rest in that old mansion. As I kept reading I was so sure the wife was going to die because she was tired and cried most if the time. Especially when she locked the door and had a rope I thought she was going to hang herself. You could tell she was starting to get a little crazy when she mentions seeing things behind the wall. It does not say what she was ill from, but it sounded like she was mentally ill.

Throughout time women were suppressed by men. Men were smarter, stronger, and their decision was final. During the early nineteenth century, if a woman disobeyed her husband or showed any signs, the husband immediately said she was medically ill and in need of treatment. According to Victorian-Era.org, the prescription to this disease in was intercourse. As a last resort, in the case of virgins or nuns, women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo “pelvic massage” manual stimulation of the genitals by the doctor until the patient experienced “hysterical paroxysm” (1). During this time, hydrotherapy devices or vibrators were introduced to help the physician’s treatment capacity. With the physician’s ability to do this in their offices, it gave individuals the opportunity to not be objectified to the insane asylums. In the story, Charlotte Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator suffers from a disease that she has not be diagnosed with yet, but is institutionalized for another reason. The narrator’s husband being her physician, diagnosed her with nervous depression for which she originally has post-partum depression that progresses into insanity due to being institutionalized.