Theme Of Mental Illness In The Yellow Wallpaper

Mental illness has been subjected to many common misconceptions in both the modern and past times. In recent times the term mental illness has become overused and desensitized, but in the past admitting to mental illness meant isolation and other futile ways of treating this illness. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the main character who is also the narrator suffers from depression and her husband John goes about treating her in a few very unhealthy ways. Through the way her husband treats her in order to cure her, the environment in which she is placed in order to cure her, and her own lack instruction as well as her inability to recognize her problems worsening. In the time period where the story is set it was believed …show more content…
The woman in the story expresses many times how much she loves her husband, but always makes sure to note that she disagrees with him and gets unreasonably mad at him. She also states that her husband tells her that while she is recovering she does not need to show proper self control, but she says that she tries tirelessly to act proper around him which tires her immensely. “But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.” This lack of her following her husband’s advice is possibly a cause of her getting worse, by acting like everything is fine and that she is well she convinced herself of a different reality where she is normal no matter what she does. The woman immediately seems to dislike the yellow wallpaper in the up stairs nursery and wastes no time in beginning to try to describe the wallpaper. Some other interesting aspects of the room are the barred windows which supposedly used to keep children safe. Another peculiar feature was the bed; the bed frame was at first thought to be extremely heavy, but was later discovered to be nailed down to the floor. The wallpaper on the walls is torn in many places that the main character assumes that the children that had lived and played there before her had torn off the wallpaper. This seems to give the room an eerie feeling and also seems to give life to a asylum like feeling with bars on the windows and nailed down bed. There is also mention of gymnastic bars on the walls and ceiling which can put thought into one’s mind of binding the woman through the gymnastic rings as a sort of treatment or restriction for her nervous depression. “It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should