The Yellow Wallpaper Depression

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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the story shows how doctors of the time period did not know the proper way to treat depression. The idea of taking a person that is suffering from depression and isolating them from everyone they know and love seems very counter productive. Although, it is not clear that physicians even knew what depression actually was. It is clear that they had absolutely no understanding of how to treat individuals suffering from these types of mental issues. This story demonstrates how far the medical field has advanced in a little over a hundred years. The main character’s husband, John, believes he is treating his wife with the best way how. Although he does not truly believe that she is sick.…show more content…
“This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” (167). There are so many other rooms in the house that it is inconceivable that the woman is forced to stay in the one that creates not only mental anguish, but causes her physical unrest. “It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.” (169). She becomes so obsessed with the wallpaper that it begins to take over all of her thoughts. “It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.” (171). The poor woman begins to lose sleep as she thinks about every inch of the paper through the great expanse of the room. She even believes that there is a woman trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight. It becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.” (171) By the end of the story, the woman becomes completely and utterly infatuated with removing the paper from the wall. The wallpaper makes the woman have a mental break by the end of the story. “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”
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