The Yellow Wallpaper is a story that Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1892. Over the course of the story, the main character, a woman who’s already mildly unstable, is driven to insanity by the supposed ‘treatment’ her husband, a respected doctor, prescribes for her instability. After looking over the story, one can figure out why her husband forces this obviously ineffective treatment upon her and doesn’t listen when told it simply makes the issues worse.
According to Charlotte herself, at the time this story was penned, women were often treated as lessers and not listened to. One could argue based on this, that him accidentally making it worse and not listening could have been simply because he didn’t know any better than that. However, if this were so, he also would treat his sister, Jennie, similarly. He does not, though; he values Jennie’s input greatly, …show more content…
The answer is simple; he does it for the same reason virtually anyone does anything. To quote the world-renowned philosopher Dr. John Dewey, “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.” Sigmund Freud, a famous neurologist, agreed with this sentiment. The husband craves importance, and whenever he was at work, he had it as an important doctor. Outside of work, however, he didn’t have much meaning. So, when his wife developed a tiny mental issue, if he had just solved it, he would have been important at home, but for only a short while. However, were he to prolong it, like he does in the story, he could fulfill his desire for importance for significantly longer, perhaps even forever, by making her dependent upon him. He might not even see this as that much of an immoral thing to do, since according to Charlotte, females were often seen as lessers at the time. True, this would be beyond selfish and an atrocious thing to do to a person, but that doesn’t really affect him
According to Charlotte herself, at the time this story was penned, women were often treated as lessers and not listened to. One could argue based on this, that him accidentally making it worse and not listening could have been simply because he didn’t know any better than that. However, if this were so, he also would treat his sister, Jennie, similarly. He does not, though; he values Jennie’s input greatly, …show more content…
The answer is simple; he does it for the same reason virtually anyone does anything. To quote the world-renowned philosopher Dr. John Dewey, “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.” Sigmund Freud, a famous neurologist, agreed with this sentiment. The husband craves importance, and whenever he was at work, he had it as an important doctor. Outside of work, however, he didn’t have much meaning. So, when his wife developed a tiny mental issue, if he had just solved it, he would have been important at home, but for only a short while. However, were he to prolong it, like he does in the story, he could fulfill his desire for importance for significantly longer, perhaps even forever, by making her dependent upon him. He might not even see this as that much of an immoral thing to do, since according to Charlotte, females were often seen as lessers at the time. True, this would be beyond selfish and an atrocious thing to do to a person, but that doesn’t really affect him