Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper

Yellow Wallpaper “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman peers into the eyes of a wealthy victorian wife as she slowly loses grasp of her sanity. John, her physician husband, utilizes the best of his blindly male centric medical knowhow to unintentionally guide his wife down the rabbit hole of insanity. As the narrators tip toes the line of lucidity, the seemingly malevolent tattered yellow wallpaper in their new home serves as the McGuffin, facilitating her voyage into madness. The central idea of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that misdiagnosis and mistreatment can worsen the state of the individual being treated. The gradual deterioration of the narrators mental state is the driving force behind “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The narrators sanity is depicted as a side thought at the story’s open. “a slight hysterical tendency — what is one to do?” (Gilman 2), the readers first encounter with the narrator’s sickness

The story unfolds in a rickety colonial mansion described by the narrator plainly as “a haunted house” (Gilman 1) with barred windows and rings bolted to the walls (Gilman 2). These features along with the “horrid” (Gilman 6) yellow wallpaper entrap the narrator and swaddle her in her own madness. As the “woman” (Gilman 6) in the wallpaper takes hold of the narrator’s psyche she grows sinisterly corporal, depicted through the unintelligible sporadic entries. The purpose of the narrator’s journal warps from entries assuring herself of the pettiness of her sickness to entries that confirm and act as horrendous safe haven’s for her unhinged mental condition. Entries like “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in hose dark grape 'arbors, creeping all around the garden” (Gilman 8) juxtapose nonchalant writing style with dark subject matter in a way that creates a disturbing tone that must be uncomfortably ingested by