Yellow Wallpaper Mental Health

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, like many women of her time, struggled with her mental health after the birth of her first child. Although medical professionals didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, it was a serious issue that was often overlooked and not treated in the right way because they just told the women to rest instead of giving them coping mechanisms. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a semi autobiography written by Gilman to show the dangers of treatments given to women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman conveys the theme of how mental health issues from misdiagnosis by medical professionals can lead to psychosis in the “The Yellow Wallpaper” by utilizing an unreliable narrator and multiple conflicts. Gilman was alive during the progressive era …show more content…
Gilman was able to contribute to this narrative with short stories she published such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” which follows the story of an unnamed narrator who gets increasingly insane and eventually ends up having a mental break. Through literature like this, Gilman was able to express the different feelings that can come after childbirth and why a restful treatment isn’t the best for every patient. Gilman herself faced what is known as postpartum depression after she gave birth to her first (and only) child and she was told by a physician that in order to be freed of her madness, she needed to rest and “never touch a pen, brush, or pencil again” (Gilman). To Gilman, this was isolating and it did not help her get better and, similar to the unnamed narrator, she went completely insane. The short story is Gilman’s way of protecting other women from the same treatment. In fact, she sent a copy of “The Yellow Wallpaper” to the very same physician who said all she needs is rest and although “he never acknowledged it,” the story did help another doctor to “alter his treatment of neurasthenia”

Show More