Yellow Wallpaper Depression

Eyes glaring from behind the walls, waiting to attack. The feelings of uneasiness, fear, and suspense crawling under one’s skin. This is the case in the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as one follows the chronicle of a housewife in the late 1800’s. This housewife, a recluse and solitary person, finds herself trapped within the same walls due to the fact she was dubbed ‘sick’. It is within these walls, that she falls forth into a dark and maniacal trance, otherwise known as the twisted realm of insanity. Confinement within the same walls slowly, but surely, destroyed her mind to the extent in which she saw images distorting into beings from within the walls. Many factors within her life contributed to this great fall, factors
One can clearly see this when the narrator states that “one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression.” This distinctly indicates that the narrator is afflicted with depression, since her husband has diagnosed her with this disorder. One is also inclined to believe that this illness is the result of childbirth and a condition known as post-partum depression. In line 33, the narrator says that “we took the nursery at the top of the house.” After reading this, one can comprehend that the narrator has recently given birth. Later on in the text, the narrator exclaims in anger after saying that she was not allowed to enter the nursery; much less, see her own child. This cruel separation from her child may not be the root of her depression, rather hormone imbalances that spike different chemicals responsible for emotion that release in one’s brain, leading to a mental disorder. Post-partum depression is common because of this fact (Pick). Such profound depression like the one the narrator finds herself in, can prove to be terrible in the sense that it can build into true hallucinogenic