Postpartum Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper

Postpartum depression has the following symptoms: paranoia, hallucination, and sleep troubles. However, back when the “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late nineteenth century postpartum had a different name. During the story, the narrator notices a woman in the wallpaper and starts to think someone is on the other side. As soon as that happens the hallucinations start and the narrator's imagination starts to wander. When the narrator starts to develop sleep troubles from numerous hours looking at the wallpaper, things do not go well for her. Because of the psychological fight from postpartum, this causes the depression to subdue the narrator and lose her fight with sanity.
Postpartum depression has not just
As stated by the Oxford Dictionary, “Unhealthy: (Of a person’s attitude or behavior) not sensible or well balanced; abnormal and harmful”. The narrator has an abnormal behavior from being driven mad from the depression, in the beginning, the narrator starts out with a healthy mind but later all of her focus is directed to the wallpaper: “I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner but it hurt my teeth”(Stetson,655). There was way to help her write down her thoughts, however the later part of the story it became obsolete and her escape came from looking at the paper that covered the walls. When John prescribes the rest cure, it includes no writing. Judith Allen, the author of The Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Sexualities, Histories, Progressivism, says “Patients were sometimes prohibited from talking, reading, writing and even sewing”(1). Although it could have been society's fault as far as the way they treated the women with said conditions, which drove the narrator mad. Without the literary escape necessary to keep her sane, the narrator is forced back to the depression’s
She lost the battle with the fight to the depression at a physiological level and it reflected outwards. This caused an overall change to the whole story from the narrator's awareness of the situation to the delusional hallucinating and insomnia woman at the end of the story. Within a few days the symptoms start to appear and by the cure’s time-frame was up the madness has set in. “I've got out at last," said I, “in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back! “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”(Stetson, 565). The way to go back to reality had been there for the narrator until this event happened; now it is disappeared