Yellow Wallpaper Mental Health

Words: 976
Pages: 4

No writing, no movement, nothing but their minds. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane, a woman admitted to a mental institution, struggles with her depression in a hostile environment during an unaccepting era. Throughout the story, Jane must resist her urge to leave the room she has been placed in for rest, and ignore the inner struggle that the wallpaper in the room causes for her. Eventually, the wallpaper becomes the only thing anchoring her to reality. Charlotte Perkins Gilman also endeavored through depression and rest therapy throughout her lifetime which inspired her to write this short story. Jane’s fight with postpartum depression and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal encounter with the illness connects …show more content…
In the story, this can be inferred by the way John looks at Jane’s illness. As a physician, he tells their friends that her illness is “but temporary nervous depression” (Gilman). He doesn’t believe that she’s sick, and even laughs at her as she observes the mental institution because she thinks that they’re renting a house (Gilman). Gilman, also, did not have a healthy marriage while experiencing her postpartum depression. Her husband and she separated, and eventually were formally divorced (Ryan). Their unhealthy marriages were detriments for both of them during their …show more content…
After two weeks in the room, Jane begins to write about the “flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin”, which she tells her husband needs to be changed (Gilman). Her husband, however, tells her that renovating a house for just a rental is useless, much to Jane’s dismay (Gilman). She learns to live with the yellow wallpaper for a while, but then her feelings towards the wallpaper begin to shift from disgust to curiosity, as time passes. She begins to grow “really fond of the room in spite of the wall paper”, and she spends her time observing the pattern of the wallpaper rather than despising her rest therapy (Gilman). Eventually, the yellow wallpaper becomes a symbol of Jane and Charlotte’s paralleled mental illnesses; Jane begins to rip the paper down (Gilman). The destruction of the wallpaper shows the women’s break from their minds, and the freedom that they gain by overcoming their mental