Madness In Stetson's The Yellow Wallpaper

Being in the state of madness or insanity is being seriously mentally ill and having a deranged mind. In Stetson’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, she gives an accurate description of the descent into madness. The narrator of the story is confined and isolated in a room with a repulsing yellow wallpaper decorating it. Since the narrator wasn’t allowed to have any type of mental exercise at all, she is always distracted by the peculiar pattern on the wallpaper. She is slowly consumed, and eventually driven mad, by a disturbing obsession with the revolting yellow wallpaper hung throughout her bedroom. It is obvious that the narrator has dealt with previous mental illnesses that could be postpartum depression or anxiety disorder. Some symptoms that are alike in both of the illnesses include: racing thoughts, lack of concentration, and unwanted thoughts. Since the narrator just gave birth to a baby, it is more likely that she was diagnosed with postpartum …show more content…
The woman behind shakes it!” (Stetson 6). At this point the narrator has lost touch with reality and is at the first steps of becoming insane. The narrator then became extremely possessive of the wallpaper she once despised, “ I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once” (Stetson 7). The narrator has become so overprotective of the wallpaper that she becomes irritated when someone simply looks at it. The short story The Yellow Wallpaper accurately depicts the descent into madness because the story presents the narrator’s mental illness and how her mental state slowly