“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman follows the narrator through her struggles with mental health that can be characterized as schizophrenia. The narrator is confined to a top floor room and not being allowed to leave shows how her illness wasn’t taken seriously, enhancing that women are seen as weak-minded and unable to control themselves. Mental health in this story suggests that not only is it not taken seriously when related to women, it is also not properly treated; rest can not be the answer to everything that ails women.
The narrator gets “unreasonable angry with John sometimes,” and is sure she “never used to be so sensitive,” thinking it “due to [her] nervous condition,” (Gilman). Her nervous condition being schizophrenia. She hides her emotions from John, seeming as though he does not truly care about whatever is wrong with her, almost ignoring what is going on. The reason for these changes in emotion and lack of are related to schizophrenia, as the narrator, herself has also made this connection.
Seeing faces and women stuck inside of the wallpaper trying to get out, is just one example of a schizophrenic hallucination in this short story. We have another where she sees the same women from the wallpaper creeping outside her window. None of this is said to John, even when he wakes up and she tries to talk to him about her condition after seeing the wallpaper move for the first time, he shuts it down stating how she is getting better. She makes a quick comment about how she is physically getting better before stopping short of what we can assume would mention her mental health declining. Not getting the proper treatment for any illness can have dire consequences, in this case, the narrator continues to become more delusional.
By the narrator herself, we can see how the treatment of those who can be deemed ‘hysteric’ or ‘disturbed’ would be shut away and rarely dealt with even by their own husbands who had more serious cases to tend to during this time. It seems as though no one else is in the house, but the mention of the bars on the window could also lead to the inference of being at an asylum of sorts, even though in the beginning we hear it has not been used for years.
The disability status that comes with mental health, is one that is also denied. We see this here as well when the husband “assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter […] but temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency — what is one to do?” (Gilman). Many, especially women, were undiagnosed and passed off as a case of hysteria. No one fought the doctors to truly find out what was wrong, and all doctors would do this. Along with the three mentioned in this story. Women were the only ones who were not so satisfied with the ‘diagnosis’ they received. The treatment of women in the medical field regarding mental disabilities has been one to put down a diagnosis just to keep them from saying anything further.
Schizophrenia has many different causes and symptoms. Relating all of these events in the story to the narrator having schizophrenia, all play an important role. Hallucinations, seeing women in the walls and also the same one woman outside of her windows, all point to some sort of psychosis. Her unstable emotions certainly play a role and are usually the first sign of any time of mental illness. Schizophrenia specifically makes sense because they are all together within the span of a few months, and her medications, that most likely are not designed for such conditions, are making it worse by treating the wrong illness.
I pledge.
Amy Rouse
Word Count; 624
