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Mental Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper

814 Words4 Pages

The narrator who lives in the patriarchal society is often controlled by the authority of her husband. John’s occupation as a physician reveals that he is standing on the dominant position in terms of his wife’s illness, and builds up the foundation of his authority in the family. John’s error method of treatment, and mental captivity of his wife leads to the ultimate tragedy. At the beginning of the story, John considers his knowledge is superior than his wife, which John thinks that he knows what is the best treatment for his wife. However, he does not believe that his wife is sick, just a slight hysterical tendency, ignoring her true thoughts and limiting her psychological and physical freedom. The text states: “ Personally, I believe …show more content…

The main reason for her madness is her living environment, loneliness and the frightening yellow wallpaper. She lives in a house where she is defined as a haunted house, and the layout of the house makes her feeling uncomfortable. As what she describes: “a haunted house” (647), her first feeling of this mansion is scary rather than enjoying, while later one, she says, “ I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room for long.” (Gilman, 649) It can be seen that she is extremely reluctant to live in this place. However, the yellow wallpaper is the critical factor that breaks her logic, which directly leads to her mental disorder, “ A smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” (Gilman, 649) With the time goes by, she even fantasies out of a woman hiding behind the wall. Moreover, her lonely life is also one of the factors causing madness, whenever she wants to meet her families and friends, her husband repeatedly rejected her requests: “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. […] to let me have those stimulating people about now.” (Gilman, 649) She was asked not to have any companions, except the yellow wallpaper. Even a normal person can’t live in such an unbearable environment for a long time, not to mention the narrator whose mental is devastated. However, these factors caused significant changes in narrator’s

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Madness often occurs when somebody desires something that is not accessible to them. When somebody cannot have what they want most, they can go insane yearning for it. For example, if an individual struggling with alcoholism attempts to go sober, they will likely experience withdrawal symptoms because their body is so used to having alcohol that it has forgotten how to function without it. During this withdrawal period, the individual may crave alcohol to the point that their psychological instincts take over and they will do absolutely anything for a drink. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator goes insane in her longing for freedom.

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However as time moves on, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes more and more real to her, it’s clear that her mental state is rapidly depleting. Her first description of a figure in the wallpaper came when she stated that the wallpaper had a “recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219). By the time the story ends, the narrator had turned into the

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(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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What exactly defines one as “insane” versus “sane”, and where is the boundary between the two? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores exactly that: the short story initially seems to be a tale of a 19th century woman forced into the notorious rest cure popularized at the time by male doctors--however, as the plot progresses, it becomes a much deeper commentary not only on societal limitations imposed on women, but also on the blurred line separating sanity from insanity. Gilman explores the boundary between sanity and insanity with the usage of different literary elements; she expresses how the boundary is “paper-thin” through the usage of symbolism, shows the subtle conversion to insanity by utilizing a stream of consciousness

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(99). The woman on the floor trying to take the wallpaper down would not let her husband in as he tried to knock the door down, but she does not realize she is doing it to herself. For example, Catherine Golden states in her article that, “The narrator seems detached from the bits of wallpaper on the floor next to her and John wallpaper fragments that could be read as a literal representation of the source of her insanity. The narrator’s hallucinations and action of tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped behind the wallpaper pattern condemn her to madness” (60).

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