preview

The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

Better Essays

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the main character’s (MC) struggle with mental illness is connected to the differential treatment she receives as a woman. Her treatment, as well as the assessment of her wellbeing, is dependent on the men around her. They decide whether she is healed, in need of treatment, or sick at all. The MC’s opinion of their assessment is irrelevant to those whose care she is in. By analysing the decisions John, her physician and husband, makes regarding her care, the limitations patriarchal socialisation inflicts on women’s agency, autonomy, and health can be examined. This is done through the evaluation of gender stereotypes, mental health treatments, and their hallucinatory effects as demonstrated in the short story. Before the MC begins her confinement in the upstairs nursery, the house’s …show more content…

This oppressive aura surrounds the MC and embodies itself in the man responsible for her care, John (90). However, the sense of oppression within the entire estate intensifies within the nursery. The yellow wallpaper explicitly causes the MC immeasurable discomfort, and its pattern exacerbates her hallucinations, as she begins to see it as a prison caging a woman behind it (Gilman 654). Although the MC revises the pattern and projects “her own passion for escape into its otherwise incomprehensible hieroglyphics” (Gilbert and Gubar 90), the woman behind it cannot “climb through that pattern” (Gilman 654) without the help of the MC. The house, and more importantly the yellow wallpaper, demonstrate to the reader that they are symbolic of the MC’s confinement and suffering within patriarchal structures. Moreover, these structures promote the binary view of acceptable gender expression, which John seeks to reinforce. As a man, John is expected to lead the household in a rational and organised

Get Access