Insanity In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

In the climax of the ending scene, the wife contemplates suicide. The only thing holding her away from free falling is the prison-like bars that block the window. Her condition at this time has been driving her crazy. She grew insane after being kept in the room and not allowed to move out of the room with the vexing wallpaper. Was the diagnosis and treatment of her condition what led her to lose her wits and destroying the wallpaper? During the Victorian Era, examinations of mentally impaired patients were not as in-depth as the examinations of today. Could the wife’s spiral into insanity in hindsight been avoided had she received a better examination rather only inside opinions from her husband and brother? Although the text references Jane from “Jane Eyre” as the possible narrator, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” acutely portrays the wife as a …show more content…
Rochester’s attic in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”, the wife shares more similarities with the experiences of Gilman than she does with the madwoman in Mr. Rochester’s attic. Crowder explains the connect between the name of Jennie and how it could have been misprinted as well as how the wife exhibits mannerisms in likeness with Bertha Mason, the madwoman (Crowder). The wife was never alluded to as a drinker, unlike Bertha Mason when described by Mr. Rochester as a descendant of “a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations” (Brontë 445). Bertha has a brother at one point, who was deceased after he was burned, stabbed and bitten by her.(Brontë 458) In the text, the wife mentions her brother who “is also a physician, and also of high standing”. By using the present tense, the wife proved that her brother was still living, unlike Bertha’s. Certain discrepancies such the living brother and the drinking habits of the women fail to completely prove the relation between Bertha and the