Postpartum Depression In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” perfectly lends itself to the eye of a feminist critic. Gilman’s narrator is highly unreliable as she recounts the horrifying treatment she received from her controlling husband and his complicit sister to destroy who this woman and completely eliminate her autonomy. This woman’s secretive journaling, though fictional, captures the essence of feminist issues in the Gothic era. In his chapter on Feminism, Robert Dale Parker states that it is a criticism mostly based off of issues with identity. Throughout Gilman’s story, her main character’s identity is slowly stripped down and reduced to nothing.

At the beginning of the book Heather Hoodhood was the kid that was really mean and only cared about herself. Like when Holling goes into her room to talk about something important, Heather asked “Mrs.Baker hates your guts right?” he nodded “Well then try getting some.” And then she slammed the door. Or like the time when she comes downstairs with a yellow flower painted on her cheek and she states that “I know that I have a yellow flower painted on my cheek. We believe in peace and understanding and freedom. We believe in sharing and healing each other.

John believes that his wife needs to get better from a nervous condition, so he takes her out to a country house to recover. He is often condescending to her and her needs, and whenever he does talk to her it is usually about his own problems. Furthermore, he does not permit her to do anything that involves work or creativity not even to write. The narrator writes in a secret diary as to provide any form of freedom and creativity that she desires as a human. John eventually finds the diary and destroys it, and John confines the narrator to a room with a yellow wallpaper that the narrator despises.

The article “Confessions of a Sociopath” tells the the story of a nameless woman and her story within her life. This article centers around her experience around other people, but it’s ironic that an article about a sociopath focuses on the feelings of others. The article attempts to inform the reader about what the inner workings of a sociopath is. The article begins with a description of being a sociopath furthermore, it talks about her childhood being rather “normal” not having any abusive parents rather a narcissist whom she actively shames. The irony of this situation is throughout the article she brags about herself with no sense of her hypocrisy she seems to be unable to recognize her similarities with her family as she casts them out

She views her teachers with negative outlooks, authority as a priority fear. Even new friends she makes throughout the story abandon her because of the depression given to her by the incident that she is keeping secret. Secrets, no matter how trivial or serious, can impact your life and your relationships in troubling ways when silenced. Melinda’s life has done a one hundred and eighty degree turn because of her silence. Before the incident of sexual assault, she had a decent life with her old friends.

Telling of her world, she brings the reader through a twisting world where all social issues within the ward stem from forced confinement. In the memoir, the idea of stigmas is confronted but altered to show the reader that the girls want to feel no shame towards their “mental illness.” This idea of being shameless is only possible because the girls believe that there is nothing wrong with them, or if there is, it is solely caused by the ‘annoying’ nurses who control them and their minds. Seeing that the girls feel no shame, this protests the stigma that comes along with having a mental illness. These specific people in the world are usually seen as incapable of doing what so called ‘normal’ people can do. They are seen as inferior, almost unworthy of respect, and are treated as youthful children when spoken to.

But, likely the way the Chinese Jarzabek 4 prostitute dealt with it was that she got help from someone who spoke her language and she communicated to them on what had happened. Maris’ sister Eri is another character in the book After Dark that isolates herself from reality. For example, the room on the other side of the television that Eri is transported to where she cannot escape. This can represent the deep sleep that plagues her as she isolates herself from the “flesh-and-blood world” which houses her problems, including her inability to connect with her sister (Murakami, 109). Eri is in this deep sleep because she wants to escape her problems, she doesn’t want to be the sister that has the beauty and she wants to be

In act two we learn that elizabeth has been acussed and they come to take her to prison. “When the children wake, speak nothing of witchcraft- It will frighten them” (Page 501) she says trying to hold herself together knowing that her children will worry. During this scene you can tell that she is very frightened, she knows that nothing good will come out of going with Hale. “(With great fear) I will fear nothing” you can imagine her struggling to stay strong but somehow she is able to keep herself together. The Author, Miller, did a good job of showing that Elizabeth is a very liked character, while Abigail is

Her environment is almost prison-like. She asks him to repaper the room, but her husband refuses stating, “that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman 14). But perhaps the most obvious use of setting to emphasize feminist views is the wallpaper itself which could be considered as the focal-point of the story. Gilman exposes more and more insight into the meaning of the wallpaper throughout the story. She uses a slow pace to release clues here and there to the reader of how the wallpaper is utilized as a symbol of male authority and or of the suppressed self.

Janes husband, John, seems to have unknowingly assisted her to become a target to such a fate. Imprisonment to a single room in the mansion, being secluded from nearly all social interactions, and targeted by her own thoughts is what ultimately pushed Jane over the edge and made her fall victim to insanity. Charlotte Perkins Stetson wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” to show first-hand the damaging effects that the rest cure could have on woman. She wanted to share her experiences and to inform people of how negative this treatment was and what it could and was doing to people who were seeking help for an already underlying mental illness. Charlotte eventually became well known for her boisterous feminist attitude, sociological views on women’s rights and equality, and most notably, her

She loses herself, as I would imagine Sophie to do after a life time of oppression. Jane saw a woman in the wall, and then became her. She took on that identity, and in her mind, then became free of ruling and imprisonment. All of my sympathy for any of the other characters in this work went solely to Jane. Her obvious mental instability made the story difficult for me to read- not because it’s what’s wrong with her, but what’s wrong with professional medical abuse, which especially back then was an ongoing problem in addition to today.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman successfully incorporated a realistic insanity into the main character of the short story as well as exposing the mental health diagnoses and cures for the 19th century. The “cures” back then were sadly insufficient and ignorant of treating the illness and instead closeting away those who suffered in the hopes of recovering or remain the dark family secret (Hale, 2008). Charlotte admits she never had hallucinations to the mural decorations, but simply her motivation to embellish and sharing her story, was in the hopes of saving women from her fate of mistreatment. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own words regarding her composition of “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Not even for her ill husband would she turn off let alone turn down a program she was not even actively watching. Place higher value over an inattimate than one 's own spouse is clearly inhumane and lacks compassion. Mildred even called the actors on her program her family demonstrating just how much the characters on a show meant to her. The distraction of her so called family eventually lead to her death because “the family pratted and chatted and said her name and smiled at her and said nothing of the bomb” (Bradbury, 152). Essentially Mildred used her “family” as a distractions from her problems.