Prescribing Madness In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Prescribing Madness: Analyzing The Damaging Relationships In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a haunting portrayal of the dangers of the 'rest cure' treatment for women with mental illness in the late 19th century. To showcase these dangers the story follows an unnamed narrator whose journal entries document her descent into madness as she is prescribed the rest cure and confined to the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a colonial mansion by her husband and physician John. By examining the doctor-patient and husband-wife relationships of the two, as well as John’s actions and the narrator's emotional state, it is made clear that Gilman is critiquing the patriarchal societal norms

Throughout her journal, the narrator reassures the reader of John's love for her and her trust in him, at one point musing that “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick” (7) and “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise and because he loves me so” (8). It is this implicit trust that she has in her husband that convinces her to continue the treatment he prescribes despite her misgivings about it. John also uses this trust as a tool to emotionally manipulate her into subservience during the night he finds her awake. During his conversation with the narrator John attempts to convince her that she is getting better, but after rebutting that she is only “Better in body perhaps-” (8) John replies “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! … Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”(9). His use of both his relationship with her as well as their child to convince her of his diagnosis is a tool that no other doctor would have and is an unethical crossing of their home and medical relationships, both of which

Unfortunately for the narrator, the consequences on her mental health from both the removal of her opinion in the treatment and from the treatment itself are drastic. Her fascination with the yellow wallpaper can, for the most part, be overlooked as a stimulus-starved brain. It is when she sees that “[The yellow wallpaper] becomes bars! … and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.”(10) during the night that the severity to which her mind has degraded becomes obvious, as she is subconsciously seeing herself imprisoned behind the walls of the mansion. At this point, even her trust in her husband begins to wane, when she candidly admits that “The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John” (10) despite trusting him without question until now which reveals her increasing paranoia. This paranoia increases quickly to a crescendo where she even changes her thoughts on John’s affection towards her, shown when she says that he “pretended to be very loving and kind” (13) while he spoke to her. These delusions spiral downward until the final day of their stay in the mansion, whereupon she locks herself in the room and tears down the wallpaper to free the woman she sees underneath, and in doing so frees herself from any sanity she had