“The Yellow Wallpaper”

 I found this piece to be very interesting and compelling largely because of the amount of times I recognized what was happening to be a contemporary problem as well as, evidently, a historical one. The narrator is suffering from a mental illness, but her husband (a doctor) refuses to believe that there is anything wrong with her aside formo a “slight hysterical tendency” (302), which her brother (also a doctor) agrees with. Because she isn’t believed, she isn’t getting any kind of treatment. Male doctors refusing to believe that women are sick, both mentally and physically, and them suffering for it has been a problem apparently since the beginning of the profession, and I have heard many real stories that were basically the same from people today.

I was also interested in this story because from what I know about mental illness (admittedly not that much, and mostly anecdotal), John is handling the narrator’s treatment all wrong. John has decided her treatment should be primarily rest, with her “absolutely forbidden to work” (302) and disallowed from visiting with her family. Given that - at the beginning of the story at least - she seems to be depressed primarily, this contradicts my understanding of effective treatment for depression. My understanding is that actively working and doing things and socializing with friends and family is pretty essential to coping with depression, even with chemical treatment. The narrator even says herself that she thinks it would be better if she “had less opposition and more society and stimulus” (303).

As a final thought, I also wondered if the narrator was suffering from postpartum depression, specifically. She mentions a baby multiple times, and that she isn’t caring for it. Since Gilman based this story at least partially after her own experiences, I looked up whether she had ever suffered from postpartum, and found that postpartum was at least part of the reason for Gilman being sent to Charles Stetson, which was the inspiration for this work. Given that, I think that the narrator does at least start off with postpartum, even if it turns into something else throughout the work.

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