Kathryn Seekins
Professor Walker
Honors EYE 101
15 October 2014
Gilman/Montgomery/Kaysen
“Two Stories, One Illness” Interpreted
When talking about illnesses there always seems to be more than one side of the illness and it all boils down to what the patient says and what the physician says. This is an idea that is brought up in Kathryn Montgomery Hunter’s, Doctor’s Stories. This idea of the two sides to an illness is also present in Susana Kaysen’s, Girl, Interrupted, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. These three stories all face the idea of two sides of an illness but they look at the different sides in many different ways. The idea of having two sides to one illness is a very realistic situation that can be addressed…show more content… She never really gives him the whole story so he never really knows how sick she is. This alters his side of the story because he changes her treatment thinking she is getting better when in reality she is getting worse. Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper” we can also see the true side of the patients story. The story is told in her perspective so the readers get to see the whole truth. The readers see that Jane isn’t doing well at all. They see what she is really feeling and that she is really getting worse but she isn’t telling him the truth. Therefore, in this case the physicians story isn’t true at all. Because he is only getting the half of the story that she is telling him, therefore he can only make diagnosis and treatments based on what he is getting from…show more content… Kaysen does this by comparing the world the patients live in while being in the hospital versus the world that we are living in while being in the real world. She talks about different events and thoughts that the patients have and how they don’t really seem that abnormal. She also points out different events that happen in the real world that she says the patients would probably do too, if they weren’t locked up (Kaysen 93). This comparison between the real world and the world inside the hospital can be used to tell one story about madness and how it feels to the