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Postpartum Depression In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Postpartum Depression Created a Human Activist Postnatal depression, commonly known as postpartum depression, is a clinical depression which can affect women after giving childbirth. Women continuously suffer from the disease without receiving any type of treatments and attempt to cure themselves. Having someone share their own experiences through writing can support one during the therapeutic process and hopefully make the recovering course less painful. The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is an embellishment of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal experience after giving birth to her daughter Katherine. Charlotte Gilman’s intentions were to illustrate the impact of the Rest Cure her nerve specialist prescribed for her and had the hopes …show more content…

This short story is an embellishment to illustrate the impact of the Rest Cure. “The story is not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman declared (Siegel, 2008). Similar to Lauren Hale, countless women are able to resonate with Gilman and “The Yellow Wallpaper” (2008). Lauren Hale explains being able to identify with the main character due to her own journey of motherhood and insanity thereafter. 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”

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