The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman follows the narrator of the story who is a middle class woman that is "married". Readers learn, through the journals the narrator has written, that she has temporary nervous depression and slight hysterical tendencies. As the story progresses, readers observe the narrator's condition declining even more, noticeable through her remarks about the wallpaper. She becomes hysterical about the wallpaper, claiming "And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping behind that pattern" (Gilman 440), near the end of the story. The narrator believes there is a woman that creeps behind that wallpaper in order to her.  

The narrator's mental illness may have been a development that occurred at some point in her life. Although it may be plausible that this type of mental illness could occur at the beginning of someone's life, this is likely not the case with the narrator. I believe the narrator in the story contracted this mental illness through a recent traumatic event. Based off of the story, the narrator explains that, "John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall" (Gilman 438). According to this statement, John's treatment for the narrator has been a relatively new thing and if she wasn't showing any signs of improvement, he would have sent her to another physician. Throughout the story there have been indications of the narrator having a child. This may have been a trigger to her mental illness. 

I believe there could have been better methods used as a treatment that could have prevented the narrator from going completely mad. Although the narrator's illness is difficult to cure in a short span of time, the rapid progression of her illness and her mental deterioration could have been prevented. Evident in the story, the narrator makes numerous cries for help, asking to be able to journal her thoughts freely and to be moved into a different room. Whether or not moving into a new room would have helped her is unknown, it may have been a theory that could have been tested. Instead, the narrator explains that John, "...said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on" (Gilman 437).  John indicates that the wallpaper was not the cause of her mental instability and that she would find other things to obsess over if the wallpaper was changed. Even though this belief may be true, John didn't give the narrator the benefit of the doubt and assumed her problems with the wallpaper were temporary.