Set in the Victorian Age, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story
"The Yellow Wallpaper" portrays a woman's repression, a repression which brings on
mental illness. Of course, the great irony of the story is that the narrator's husband,
John, follows the advice of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell (the real doctor who treated Gilman
herself) and has his wife confined in a room for bed rest in an effort to cure her
depression, but this very confinement is what leads to her complete mental
breakdown.
This mental breakdown is symbolized in the
narrator's delusionary images of a woman trapped behind the hideous unsymmetrical
pattern of a yellow wallpaper in the solitary bedroom where she is confined. While she
must remain in bed alone, the narrator has nothing with which to divert herself, so she
stares for hours at the wallpaper. Having become obsessed with the pattern, she says
that life is more exciting now than it used to be because she has "something more to
expect, to look forward to, to watch." Because she eats better and is more quiet than
she has been, "John is so pleased to see me improve!" Here, too, there is irony since
the narrator is actually becoming worse, but her husband believes her
better.
The destructive force of the patriarchal society of
Gilman's narrator is apparent with the deterioration of the narrator's sanity. The
restrictions placed upon the woman do not allow her creativity any avenues or outlets.
So, she is forced to occupy her thoughts with something, and the ugly yellow wallpaper
becomes her focus. Had she been allowed to write or walk in the garden or see her
baby as she had longed to do, Gillman's narrator may have been able to overcome her
depression. Gillman herself, having suffered post-partum depression and having been
treated by Dr. Mitchell in real life, removed herself from his care; and, attributing
her emotional problems in part to the confines of her marriage, she left her husband, as
well.
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