Mental Illness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Many controversial treatments existed in the 19th century for women suffering from mental illness, but these treatments were often not upheld by practical evidence. Subjected to torture, imprisonment, and ridicule, women suffered from the toxic societal norms often resulting in permanent psychological damage. Along with this torturous pattern of misdiagnosis, women were often undertreated for legitimate mental illnesses. Written in 1890, Gilman illustrates the mistreatment of women who so desperately needed proper medical attention by referencing the rest cure and including symbolic references and dynamic diction.
As mentioned in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the rose in incidence within the 1800s to treat bouts of hysteria and nervous breakdowns. With the discovery of …show more content…
The narrator involuntarily resides in the nursery at “the top of the house” where the “windows are barred for little children” (Gilman 781). The wallpaper in her room has crooked patterns which the narrator sees to resemble some kind of fence, trapping a “great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast… And all she is all the time trying to climb through” (Gilman 789). These trapped figures represent women in society who feel a sense of imprisonment to societal standards where they are considered inferior. The wallpaper stands out with a “repellant [color], almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (Gilman 781). Decaying in the sunlight and displaying a sickly yellow, the color represents not only the sickness in the narrator’s mind, but the disease plaguing society which consequently allows the mistreatment of mental illness to flourish. Her husband’s treatment plan of the rest cure has driven her to feel confined behind symbolic chains and literal bars which exist in the bedroom she resides
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