The Yellow Wall-Paper By Charlotte Perkins Stetson
If you stare at a wall-paper long enough will it seem to move? Wall-paper with crazy designs in a strange house could seem creepy to anyone, but to one woman it is the object that leads to her to become senseless. The Yellow Wall-paper is about a woman who had a baby, and moved into a different house with her husband for a summer. She eventually goes crazy due to many things, but the focus is on some yellow wall-paper. In The Yellow Wall-paper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the treatment of a woman and some odd yellow wall-paper causes her to go crazy. What started out as a nervous condition she gained after having a baby, quickly changed into insanity due to childlike treatment, the inability to connect with her baby, and her disgust and fixation
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Her husband John, who is a physician, is convinced in the beginning that his wife has temporary nervous depression, and that all she needs is some time alone to recover. She takes “phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise” (648.) John has her taking medicines, and doing certain things to help her to get better, but it essentially contributes to the problem. The wife is not allowed to do much of anything so Johns’ sister Mary takes care of everything for her. They leave her basically alone to do nothing all day to try to get better, and John sees physical signs as proof she is getting better when she is actually getting worst. The narrator herself knows she is not better in her mind, but because her husband is happy with her physical improvement she does not say anything. Even if she were to speak up and tell John how she feels, or what she thinks, it would not matter because he had a habit of not listening to her concerns. The narrator had mentioned changing the wall-paper and John “laughs at me so about this wall-paper!” and “he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worst for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies”(649.) John, as a physician, believes that he knows what is best for his wife, but in the end what he thought was good for his wife was in reality the worst thing for …show more content…
The woman had a baby and it was taken away from her. She was not allowed to see it for at least three months. She was subjected to the pain of knowing who has her baby, but not being able to do anything about it. Just as everything else Mary was the one taking care of the baby. The lady says, “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a good baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (649.) She realizes that not being with her baby is worsening her condition, and she is still not able to see, or care of the baby. To make it worst, the room John chose for them was a nursery, and child play room. This has to be a constant reminder of her baby. She tried to convince John to choose another room, but to no prevail, “John would not hear of it” (648.) He only wanted to stay in the room that was the nursery, the room that would remind her of the baby she could not hold; the room with the yellow wall-paper that she hated so
Her husband John, who is a physician, is convinced in the beginning that his wife has temporary nervous depression, and that all she needs is some time alone to recover. She takes “phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise” (648.) John has her taking medicines, and doing certain things to help her to get better, but it essentially contributes to the problem. The wife is not allowed to do much of anything so Johns’ sister Mary takes care of everything for her. They leave her basically alone to do nothing all day to try to get better, and John sees physical signs as proof she is getting better when she is actually getting worst. The narrator herself knows she is not better in her mind, but because her husband is happy with her physical improvement she does not say anything. Even if she were to speak up and tell John how she feels, or what she thinks, it would not matter because he had a habit of not listening to her concerns. The narrator had mentioned changing the wall-paper and John “laughs at me so about this wall-paper!” and “he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worst for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies”(649.) John, as a physician, believes that he knows what is best for his wife, but in the end what he thought was good for his wife was in reality the worst thing for …show more content…
The woman had a baby and it was taken away from her. She was not allowed to see it for at least three months. She was subjected to the pain of knowing who has her baby, but not being able to do anything about it. Just as everything else Mary was the one taking care of the baby. The lady says, “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a good baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (649.) She realizes that not being with her baby is worsening her condition, and she is still not able to see, or care of the baby. To make it worst, the room John chose for them was a nursery, and child play room. This has to be a constant reminder of her baby. She tried to convince John to choose another room, but to no prevail, “John would not hear of it” (648.) He only wanted to stay in the room that was the nursery, the room that would remind her of the baby she could not hold; the room with the yellow wall-paper that she hated so