What Is The Theme Of Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

In addition, she always talks about the moonlight during these times of night. When the moonlight is not present, the narrator is not active. Her husband comes to visit and she does not do much. But at night, when her husband is sleeping, the narrator wakes up and starts walking around the room. The protagonist believes that there is a woman trapped by the wall, and that this woman only moves at night with the night light.

Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a journal that a woman has written in secret from her husband as she is in a room isolated by herself. She secretly writes the journal to express her feelings. The woman, Jane, is sick, and her husband prescribes her a rest cure to recover. He forbids her from doing anything, which includes writing. The isolation and repression of her life are made clear through the setting of the story, her husband John, and the thoughts and writing of her journal.

Dialogue, narration, and symbolism are being used by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to show that women with mental health problems are not taken serious. Throughout the story, readers are shown how the woman with postpartum depression is not treated properly for her condition and she is driven into madness. Gilman wants readers to realize this woman needed help but because she was not taken seriously, she ended up worse in the

The room becomes the woman’s world because he cannot leave. The yellow wallpaper represents her fear of being trapped. It also is the very thing causing her imprisonment inside the room. The narrator says “At the night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamp light, and worst of all by moon light it becomes bars!” (Gilman 662). Every night she lies awake and looks at her cell of a room as her eyes roam around the wallpaper.

She suffers from nervous depression and complains that her husband, who also is a doctor, belittles her symptoms and her thoughts in general. She says that his rationalistic behavior is a compliment to her imaginative personality. She begins a secret journal in order to better cope with these feelings and concerns that she has. She talks about the room and how she hates the yellow wallpaper as it is odd, pattern less, and “revolting”. She complains of John’s patronizing ways but goes back to the wallpaper.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself was tired of the limitations and constraints of being a wife, so after her own experience with postpartum depression she decided to write about her own experience. Much like the narrator, Gilman felt she had no existence beyond the home. She also revealed for the first time that the family life could never satisfy a women unless she too was able to grow alongside the family individually. The yellow wallpaper within the narrators confined room represents her waning emotional state. The mental health of the woman is quite literally out the window at this point in the story.

Jennie, John’s sister is the housekeeper, but her most important job is to keep an eye on her sister-in-law making sure she follows John’s strict daily regimen of doing nothing. Several weeks later, the narrator’s condition worsens and she feels nervous, depressed, fatigued, and lacks energy to write in her secret journal. The narrator’s only stimulation is spending hours studying the perplexing pattern of the wallpaper. She becomes obsessed with the repulsive wallpaper, as the image of the figures creeping around behind the wallpaper becomes clearer each day. Late one night the moonlight reveals the figures of women trapped behind the bars.

Her house is controlling her entire life and influencing the people around her, but the going-and-coming of it is out of anyone’s control. As seen through the solitude, the trap-door effect, and the death associated with the house, Miss Emily is not keeping people out of her house, the house is keeping

It represents the psychological block that society attempts to place on women during the 1800’s. The color distinct color yellow is connected with sickness and weakness which displays the gender differences of how society sees women as weak and men inferior. The wallpaper in fact makes the main character feel “sick” as the short story develops. As a matter of fact, the wallpaper draws a line between insanity and sanity that the narrator faces. Quawas offers honest insight and advice on “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and its symbolic significance that is portrayed throughout the short story.

The setting of the room symbolizes the loneliness the narrator is undergoing. The narrator has her mind encased that there is a woman struggling and in her solitary room, she feels its true and she is even seen fighting for her. The author used the room to symbolize what the main character was going through all alone in the isolated estate where she was brought by her husband. The yellow paper played a distinct reason for the narrator’s madness. In her writings, she explains that the more she became insane, the more the wall paper became a big issue to her that is why she smudged ultimately.