Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

            “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an example of how stories and the symbolism to which they are related can influence the perspective of its readers and alternate their point of view. In the “Yellow Wall-Paper”, the unknown narrator gets so influenced by her surroundings that she starts showing signs of mental disorder, creating through many years several controversies on trying to find the real causes of her decease.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is told she needs to rest constantly to overcome her sickness, so she is forced to stay in the old nursery where there is yellow-orange wallpaper with a busy, obnoxious pattern that she hates. She tries to study the wallpaper to distinguish the pattern, and as time goes on she believes she sees a woman moving around in the background of the pattern. Also, during this period of time the character’s condition is worsening, because her husband is causing her mind to weaken by not allowing her to exert herself at all; he says she is not to think about her condition, walk through the garden or visit family. All she can do is sleep and trace the wallpaper, and being cooped up in the room causes her to begin hallucinating. The narrator sees the woman trying to escape from the wallpaper throughout the night, and she ultimately completely breaks down and believes that she is the woman.

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.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has

As the reader is introduced to the main character in the story, she is heard talking about strange things happening around her. She secretly wrote her thought in a journal but her husband was against it and never wanted her to do anything. The nameless narrator in her madness sees a woman in the pattern of the wallpaper. In addition, she sees the woman struggling against the bars of the paper and this is a symbol for the struggle of women who attempt to break out from the infringing rules of the society. The woman the narrator sees caught in the wallpapers also parallels her virtual imprisonment in an isolated estate away from her child by her mean husband.

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

The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates how a girl becomes insane over other the color of a wall. She becomes so intrigued with the color, which was yellow, that she would constantly observe it every moment she could. There seemed to be a picture of a girl hiding behind the wallpaper, so the narrator would try to help her out behind the cage bars that she was in. Her husband would try to help her as much as possible by telling her not think about certain things and preventing her from trying to do something that would hurt her. There were many times where the narrator would think of something, and her husband would tell her to stop thinking about bad ideas, because it would put her into a worse state of mind.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the narrator has a “nervous condition” that is affecting her mental state of mind. The narrator of the story just had a baby and her husband, a doctor, has recommended that she stay in one room and not have any human contact nor read or write. The cure for her mental disease was a suggestion by Weir Mitchell, a doctor who felt that a rest cure was the best way to overcome this condition. The narrator shows us that she allows herself to be obedient to her husband, that she develops an obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her room and that her condition becomes worse by not being allowed to be herself. After giving birth, the reader developed a nervous condition and it caused her to have an obsession

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the story is narrated by a woman with a mental illness who seems trapped in her own mind as well as trapped in her room. As the story proceeds and her condition worsens, the images she portrays in the wallpaper become more disturbing. The woman is fixated on her hate of the wallpaper and it drives her insane.

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" takes a close look at one woman's mental deterioration. The narrator is emotionally isolated from her husband. Due to the lack of interaction with other people the woman befriends the reader by secretively communicating her story in a diary format. Her attitude towards the wallpaper is openly hostile at the beginning, but ends with an intimate and liberating connection. During the gradual change in the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper, the yellow paper becomes a mirror, reflecting the process the woman is going through in her room.

One major influence in Gilman’s life that led her to write The Yellow Wallpaper was her own mental illness and post-partum depression. Gilman was first diagnosed with a mental illness while she was married to Charles Stetson, during 1884 and 1894. On March 23rd, 1885 Gilman gave birth to Katherine Beecher Stetson, during that time motherhood often consumed her time, resulting her to let go of her ambitions. Gilman often questioned why childbearing was one only by women she stated, “Men have as much right to raise children as women do” (qtd. in Schlesinger Library). Gilman was always critical about her lifestyles and decisions. It is then noticeable that both narrator and author share the same pain and misery of post-partum depression. Readers

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story tell about the narrator who becomes more depressed by her isolation. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the short story of a woman who is suffering from the depression during the summer vacation. The woman is kept in a room where she slowly goes crazy looking at the pattern in the wallpaper. The narrator’s husband, John, is a physician, and also her brother is a physician. The narrator is sick, but no one believes her, which causes her temporary nervous depression. Her husband does not understand her feelings and treats her like a child. It is important for her take stand on her own. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” mainly concentrates on Gilman’s opinion of her husband,

Although, I knew while reading that the Yellow Wall-paper was written in 1892, a period where women were oppressed and where little was known about woman mental illness and their treatments, my first feeling was anger toward the significant others (brother and husband) of the narrator because they did not believe she was sick, and they did not provide the right kind of treatment for her illness. Instead of being supportive and caring, her significant others especially her husband were absent and were not listening when she wanted to talk about her family. After anger, what I felt was compassion for the husband. Like I said in the beginning, the story was happening in a society where men had total supremacy, and this was probably how they were

The "Yellow Wall Paper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression. The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the driving force in the story because it is the main factor that caused the narrator to go insane.

The wallpaper is beginning to take on the role of controlling her life. As the days proceed on and she continues to sit in this isolated room, she begins to notice objects incorporated throughout the patterns. Every day the shapes become significantly clearer to her until one moment it appears to be a figure trapped within the walls (734). This aversion to the color completely shifts at this point toward hallucination. The wallpaper now has complete control of the narrator’s mind and sanity.