The Yellow Wallpaper Female Hysteria Essay

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a first-person narration of madness experienced by an unnamed woman in the Victorian era. The madness is exposed through a “nervous condition” diagnosed by the writer’s husband, a physician, who believes the only cure is prohibiting all intellectual thought and to remain in solitude for a “rest-cure”. The act of confinement propels the narrator into an internal spiral of defiance against patriarchal discourse. Through characterization and symbolism, “The Yellow Wallpaper” exhibits an inventive parallel between the narrator’s mental deterioration and her internal struggle to break free from female oppression imposed on her through her husband and society.

  The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can by read in many different ways.  Some think of it as a tragic horror story while others may find it to be a tale of a woman trying to find her identity in a male-dominated society.  The story is based on an episode in Gilman's life when she suffered from a nervous disease called melancholia.  A male specialist advised her to "live a domestic a life as far as possible.. and never to touch a pen, brush or pencil..."   (Gilman, 669).   She lived by these guidelines for three months until she came close to suffering from a nervous breakdown.  Gilman then decided to continue writing, despite the physicians advice, and overcame her illness.

Gender roles seem to be as old as time and have undergone constant, but sometime subtle, revisions throughout generations. Gender roles can be defined as the expectations for the behaviors, duties and attitudes of male and female members of a society, by that society. The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a great example of this. There are clear divisions between genders. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century where a rigid distinction between the domestic role of women and the active working role of men exists (“Sparknotes”). The protagonist and female antagonists of the story exemplify the women of their time; trapped in a submissive, controlled, and isolated domestic sphere, where they are treated

It was commonly casted that women during the 19th century were not to go beyond their domestic spheres. If a woman were to go beyond the norms and partake in a “male” activity and not assign to “womanly” duties, it were to take an ill effect on her, because she was designed to act merely as a mother, wife, and homemaker. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, demonstrates the status of women in the 19th century within society, revealing that madness in this story stems from the oppressive control of gender on woman. A woman who is trying to escape from confinement may result in madness. The use of madness characterizes women as victims of society, suffering the effects of isolation brought on by oppression driving

Hysteria was one of the class diseases of the 19th century…for centuries hysteria has been seen as characteristically female- the hysterical woman the embodiment of a perverse or hyper femininity…and in [the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s…physicians reported a high incidence of nervous disease and hysteria among women who felt overwhelmed by the burdens of frequent pregnancies, the demands of children, the daily exertions of housekeeping and family management (Smith-Rosenberg, 1972, 652, 653, 657).

Mitchell was predisposed to think that women did not need to leave there bed or even their homes when they were ill. The rest cure also exacerbated normal gender roles of that era. Men were the ones who belonged in the outside world; they were the bread winners. Men needed to be outside of the home and to take care of the needs of everyone in it. In contrast, women were supposed to inside the home of take care of the home. Dr. Mitchell ensures men were not feeling emasculated by being subject to the same treatment as women and be subject to their homes where they felt only women were supposed to be. The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman, highlight the mental distress that the rest cure tolls on your mental state. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” because of her experience on the rest cure and she wanted to “save people from being driven crazy”. Another reason that Gilman could have written the short story is to show that women need intellectual stimulation as much as men and that living domestically and not doing things that express a person’s creative side could drive them insane.

In the 1950’s, women weren’t respected for doing anything besides being an outstanding wife and mother. Women and men weren’t on the same level when it came to rights in the eyes of the law. Also during this time, mental illnesses were not accurately researched, and since doctors weren’t fully aware of all the information about mental illnesses, patients did not always get the best treatment and were treated as freaks. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both of these elements are present. Gilman did a wonderful job portraying how women are not taken seriously and how lightly mental illnesses are taken. Gilman had, too, had firsthand experience with the physician in the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's believes that there really was no difference in means of way of thinking between men or women is strongly. “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 happen during a time period where women were mistreated. Women were treated as second rate people in community during this time period. Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the thought process of the community during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written. Using knowledge on equal rights between women and men, one can carefully study “The Yellow Wallpaper” by

Kessler further explains that Dr. Mitchell’s treatment only made Gilman’s depression worse and that eventually "she ceased to follow his regimen" (158). The character she creates in "The Yellow Wallpaper" also fantasizes about ending her regimen saying, "I wish I could get well faster" (Gilman 81). Both seem to view the rest cure as an unwanted interruption in their lives. It should be no surprise then that Gilman draws from her own experience and Dr. Mitchell’s treatment. She even finds a way to incorporate him into the story as a kind of threat to the narrator. The narrator in the story is thinking about the reaction of her husband, who is also a doctor, to her slow convalescence, "if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall" (Gilman 82).

     The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives a brilliant description of the plight of the Victorian woman, and the mental agony that her and many other women were put through as "treatment" for depression when they found that they were not satisfied by the life they had been given.

It does not take the form of the traditional symbol of security for the domestic

In her book Women's Madness, Misogyny or Mental Illness, Ussher notes that in the Victorian era, hysteria was diagnosed primarily in strong, outspoken women: in other words: women who transgressed the ideal of true womanhood and thus challenged patriarchy. This is

S. Weir Mitchell, as quoted by Jennifer L. Pierce, shared the thought that “hysteria was a woman’s disorder—a psychological manifestation of ‘the emotions rising from the womb’” (Pierce 257). The uterus, or the ‘hystera’ caused the manifestation of hysteria; women during this time with “hysterical” symptoms would be taken by men, for a hysterectomy. A hysterectomy “cured” hysteria along with other symptoms with the complete surgical removal of the uterus. Also, without the female’s knowledge, countless surgeries were made after pregnancies in order to control the “hysterical” women of the time. Spengler mentions that “even though insanity was not exclusively female realm, women were deemed more prone to mental instability than men, and until

Forgotten. Thrown aside. For thousands of years women’s mental health was cast aside as if nothing was wrong. It was considered some “physical” problem, but research would show that was not the case. Take Emily Dickinson for example: even though she wrote hundreds of poems, she practically lived in seclusion. She spoke to almost no one, but yet had years of conversations through letters. In Emily’s case, the loss of someone who she loved dearly may have caused her depressive episode and sent her spiraling down into a different lifestyle (Emily Dickinson). Men and women throughout history have been presumed to not have anything wrong, but in many cases their issues have become serious cases. Women are more likely to have a mental disease than men, but there still has not been a cure to the problems facing many women (Women and Mental Health).

     In the late nineteenth century, after the American social and economic shift commonly referred to as the "Industrial Revolution" had changed the very fabric of American society, increased attention was paid to the psychological disorders that apparently had steamed up out of the new smokestacks and skyscrapers in urban populations (Bauer, 131).  These disorders were presumed to have been born out of the exhaustion and "wear and tear" of industrial society (Bauer, 131-132).  An obvious effect of these new disorders was a slew of physicians and psychiatrists advocating one sort of cure or another, although the "rest cure" popularized by the physician S. Weir Mitchell was the most

The yellow wallpaper is a story about John and his wife who he keeps locked up due to her "nervous condition" of anxiety. John diagnoses her as sick and has his own remedy to cure her. His remedy s to keep her inside and deterring her from almost all activities. She is not allowed to write, make decisions on her own, or interact with the outside world. John claims that her condition is improving but she knows that it is not. She eats almost nothing all day and when it is suppertime she eats a normal meal. John sees this and proclaims her appetite is improving. Later in the story, the woman creates something of an imaginary friend trapped behind the horrible looking yellow wallpaper in