Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

While certain symptoms of illness are less often overlooked, this is not always the case. An almost tragic example of this is portrayed by Charlotte Perkins in her story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This eye-opening short story utilizes irony to present the narrator’s delusional state of mind, where as her husband, amongst the other characters, does not realize the fate of the narrator after her misdiagnosis. The issue that is more surprising than the depression and insanity seen in this story are the attitudes of the other characters. The narrator’s insanity is caused by her husband, the treatment prescribed to her, and her obsession with the wallpaper. The first and most impacting cause of the narrator’s insanity is the treatment she receives from her husband. John’s diagnosis of the narrator is one of the major impacts of her declining mental state, because it is the foundation that her treatment and her husband’s attitude are based upon. The narrator, who is not named in the story, is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression. However, her symptoms include all of those associated with postpartum depression. …show more content…
She, at one point in the story, declares that the color of the wallpaper is “hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” (752). The wallpaper is the central cause of her escalation of madness. She finds the wallpaper repulsive (752). This is because the narrator is an artist. The yellow wallpaper is completely abstract; it has no pattern or meaning. No matter how terribly she wants to make sense of the wallpaper, she never will. It seems as though the narrator begins to make friends with the wallpaper, or at least submit to it. Towards the end of the story, she finds that she grows a connection with the room (750). The wallpaper is one of the main reasons that the narrator’s insanity escalates so