Preview

The Yellow Wallpaper - the Physical and Mental Health Aspects Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
726 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Yellow Wallpaper - the Physical and Mental Health Aspects Essay Example
The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1899 is a story that depicts physical, and mental illness as well as the factors surrounding seclusion and what it can do to a person. Some of the changes that were occurring in the story such of that as the changes in the wallpaper, reflect the changes that were occurring in her at the time. The description and attitude change to be drawn with the thinking of the narrator. A balance of positive and negative imagery also plays a role in the story. There is a progression of change throughout the story and during this time the narrator is unable to give an accurate description because of her mental state.

The physical illness is derived from her unhappiness because she is not allowed to visit cousin Henry and Julia which made her feel very unhappy and that led to her not eating because she feels so secluded from everyone. She was also not allowed to work until she was well enough since she did not move a lot during the day and mostly slept and this can affect the body a lot when one can't move a lot. Whenever she would get the chance she would write about what she saw in the wallpaper or even about something, and this would be as soon as John would come around because he said that it wouldn't be good for her condition.

Her mental illness seems to really get out of control when the yellow wallpaper in her room starts to make her become really obsessed with the pattern in the wall paper, she believes the images are of a women creeping behind the paper and the pattern is holding the women in and she can not escape. Her fixation of staring at the wall to try to make out the images of the women and trying to find a way to help then is a sign of her mental instability. In the end she locks herself in her room and starts to rip off all the wallpaper and just sits there—another sign of her diminishing health. John is of no help to her at this time even though he tells her to open the door

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    John is rather a cold character showing no understanding or even wanting to understand his wife’s illness. He does not see it even as an illness but rather as her needing to pull herself together. He is almost fearful of any mention of mental illness and when she suggests her body is well but not her mind he gives her “a stern reproachful look” and describes it as a “false and foolish fancy”.…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman unveil the expectations of certain characteristics that women should possess by men such as, obedience, submissiveness, beauty, passivity, and purity. The husband, John, portrayed in this short-story treats the narrator, or his wife, as if she is oblivious and as if she is merely a child evident in his diction. He refers to her as a “little girl” and therefore does not take her opinions into serious consideration and simply overlooks her requests. To coerce his own opinions upon the narrator, he sugarcoats his thoughts as an attempt to make them appeal to her: “My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, and that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind!” The narrator is sent to an asylum due to her mental condition while her actions are restricted by John as a part of her treatment. The narrator makes it evident that she is severely repressed by her husband’s authority, as she interrupts her own train of thought with her husband’s instructions for treatment. As she neglects her own thoughts and turns her attention to John’s authority, she enters the process of increasing obsession and madness: “So I will let it alone and talk about the house.” The…

    • 1033 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    She also has difficulty coping with other people. She has sudden outbursts and sudden acts of rage to anyone who interrupts with her intense routine. For example, at min 5 of the movie, she throws her housekeeper Mrs. Slims because she like give fits of semiprecious metaphor and that also she like to move things. Her reaction toward her housekeepers describe one of the first symptoms of schizophrenia, catatonic behavior. Finally, some of her life difficulties appear to root from her own mental illness. She dislike the idea of being sent to a group home or being treated as a mental disorder patient.…

    • 1350 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The “The Yellow Wallpaper” story started off with a small family that moved into a new summer home to spend some time away. The narrator’s husband is her own physician, and he tells her that she needs rest away from people to recover from her mental illness. The main character’s favorite hobby is to write thoughts and ideas down on paper. She is also a mother, but she doesn’t mention her child that often due to the fact that she wasn’t able to take care of her baby. The narrator is a young woman, sometimes referred to as “Jane” who is suffering from severe mental illness; not being able to have freedom caused the narrator's health to fall into a worse pattern.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Within the room that Jane spends most of her time, one of the first things she describes in detail is the wallpaper. Jane believes the “wall and paint look as if a boys’ school had used it” and she continues, “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper, 610). As the weeks pass, Jane spends more and more time in the room, where she is locked away from society and social interaction. Gilman writes that Jane sees that the wallpaper has, “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 611). Jane begins to see patterns and images within the wallpaper because she is confined by her husband’s treatment. When John stripped her of the opportunity to write, Jane was forced to find a new way to engage her mind and express herself. Jane wants to keep this new found way of expressing herself out of the hands of her husband and his sister, Jennie. Gilman writes, “I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly o the most innocent excuses and I’ve caught him several times looking at the wallpaper! And Jennie too. […] I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 615). Jane slowly comes to the realization that there is not only a pattern within the wallpaper, but also a woman trapped behind it. Rula comments on the woman within the wallpaper and how it affects…

    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is truly insane from the very beginning of the story; she just falls deeper and deeper into insanity as the story progresses. In the beginning of the story she tells of how her husband diagnoses her insanity, "a slight hysterical tendency,"(633). Later in the story she admits her own condition, "I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes…I think it is due to this nervous condition."(634). John, her husband, makes her stay in bed and rest through the story; this contributes to her gradual slide into complete insanity. She begins to show signs of her schizophrenia. She sits in her room starring at the walls and begins to envision people stuck behind the wallpaper.…

    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman is known by readers of literature and students across the globe for her most famous piece “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The famous story follows a woman who suffers from mental illness and her growing infatuation with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom. It touches on the responsibility of women in the late 1800’s and the narrator’s inability to fulfill the duties of a housewife. At the end of the short story, the narrator’s illness takes over her mind and body as she believes she has seen a woman in the wallpaper, eventually putting herself in the wallpaper as well. When readers look deeper into the text, it is apparent…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, Jane Suffers from herself and her surroundings. Jane is Suffering from postnatal depression. This disease, the…

    • 970 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper Flaws

    • 583 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The husband also does not take his wife’s condition seriously she states this in several different places throughout the story. “You see, he does not believe I am sick” (64). She also says “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do” (64). These statements make the narrator feel like nothing is wrong with her and that it is all in her…

    • 583 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Instead of seeking help for her illness like most people would, her husband decides to isolates her in the room with the yellow wallpaper causing her to get worse and come up with these delusional…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must deal with several different conflicts. She is diagnosed with “temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 221). Most of her conflicts, such as, differentiating from creativity and reality, her sense of entrapment by her husband, and not fitting in with the stereotypical role of women in her time, are centered around her mental illness and she has to deal with them.…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" begins with the arrival of narrator, her husband John, their new born baby, and her sister-in-law to summer house which John have rented. The narrator is suffering from post-partum depression, and the summer house will serve, according to her husband, as a place for her to get better.…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper, it can be inferred that the woman’s state of mind is slowly worsening. The woman in the story…

    • 1874 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a piece of literature "The Yellow Wallpaper". Gilman is the narrator who is suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her baby. The narrator and her husband John have rented a house for the summer. John is a doctor and had moved into the country to give her wife a new environment. Most of the time, the husband is requesting her to rest as much as she can.…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Throughout life there may be somethings that may make a person seem as they are going insane. In the story “The Yellow-Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the narrator is staying in a summer house with her husband, John. She is going through a nervous condition which is keeping her from working until she is well enough to do so. John takes diligent care of her as she is going through her illness and makes sure she is well taken care of. The room her and her husband are staying in, in the summer home, has yellow wallpaper. This yellow wallpaper seems to have a big effect on the narrator as she starts seeing a woman behind the wall. She only sees the women in the daylight doing odd things. At the end of the story the women behind the yellow wallpaper has got to her and makes her go crazy. She tears the wallpaper off to let the women out and makes her husband faint. In “The Yellow Wall-paper” the women suffers from anxiety, hallucination, and depression which causes her to go insane.…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays