Yellow Wallpaper Depression

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"The Yellow Wallpaper" “The Yellow Wallpaper’ is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The plot of the story is the medical treatment of a woman with a nervous disorder, a.k.a. depression (including postpartum depression). The protagonist is an unnamed woman with a submissive, almost child-like faith and obedience to the supremacy of her husband, John. John is a renowned doctor and is treating her illness. This paper will focus on feminism in three areas; the medical diagnosis, the treatment prescribed, and the yellow wallpaper. The medical diagnosis Our protagonist and narrator of the “Yellow Wall-paper” appears to be suffering from a serious bout of depression, possibly post-partum mentioning “the baby” only once and…show more content…
The rest cure is a “regimen of enforced bed rest, isolation, force-feeding, and massage” (Stiles). The treatment was also to assist in reinforcing gender roles. Mitchell believe that “intellectual achievement” gained from working, education and independence, was damaging to a women’s health. Women of this time were just starting to branch out of gender specific roles and during a time when there wasn’t a lot of knowledge and research about mental, psychological and neurological disorders, it is easy to see why the two were connected. The Yellow Wallpaper The tragic irony of the story is found in the mirror-like effect of the yellow wallpaper. The protagonist, narrator, describes in detail how bad the yellow paper is. She writes the color is “repelleny, almost revolting” (p. 288) and “I never saw a worse paper in all my life” (p. 288). However, shortly she hears her husband coming and has to stop writing. As part of her treatment she is not allowed to write. Nevertheless the wallpaper is a part of her everyday life, day and night. Speaking of night, that is where the crises begins. At night is when she sees the woman behind the bars in the wallpaper. She realizes that she is the only one that understands the wallpaper. After all she is the woman in the wallpaper and she tries to rescues her, or help herself. The climax is when she identifies herself with the woman in the
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