The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness And Oppression

On Mental Illness and Oppression in Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† Mental illness is a pressing condition that requires a doctor’s acceptance and understanding to be treated. One must respect the disorder and be aware of its side effects and characteristics in order to comprehend what is happening to the affected individual. In today’s society, most people are accepting of people’s handicaps and take into consideration their limits, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people were unaccepting of impairments and were quick to misjudge individuals leading them to be wrongly diagnosed. No piece of American literature better demonstrates this concern than Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper.† Gilman uses her background filled with her own struggles with mental illness and the oppression she suffered from her husband and 19th century society due to that illness to illustrate the outcome of a d octor or bystander dismissing the seriousness of the disease. A reader can witness the mental illness and oppression Gilman faced and the consequences of a misdiagnosis through her character Jane in â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper.† Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an ambitious and revolutionary feminist and activist, but mental illness threatened to restrict her even before oppression did. In fact, Gilman began suffering from depression in her pubescent years. Many people suggest she â€Å"inherited† depression as the center of her life from her mother’s family, theShow MoreRelatedAnalysis of Charlotte Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper969 Words   |  4 PagesYellow Wallpaper Annotated Bibliography Frye, C.B. Using Literature in Health Care: Reflections on The Yellow Wallpaper. The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. (32: 7). 1998. 829.33. Print. Most people who wrote about The Yellow Wallpaper do so from the perspective of a literary scholar. This however is written by someone in the health care field. C.B. Frye says that fiction can impact the larger world; in this case it impacted mental health and the work of Gillmans doctor, S Weir Mitchell. AlthoughRead MoreContributing Factors for the Degradation in Mental Illness from The Yellow Wallpaper and Bartleby the Scrivenor896 Words   |  4 PagesMelissa Mills Compare/Contrast October 5, 2011 Intro to Lit. MW 3:00 Contributing Factors for the Degradation in Mental Illness of the Nameless Narrator and Bartleby Until the late 1800’s when psychoanalysis was introduced, there was little to no distinction between classifications of mental illness. The female protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and Bartleby of Herman Melville’s â€Å"Bartleby the Scrivenor† are both characters that seem to suffer from depression.Read MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman885 Words   |  4 Pageshistory there has been a stigma around mental illness and feminism. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the 1900’s. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† has many hidden truths within the story. The story was an embellished version her own struggle with what was most likely post-partum depression. As the story progresses, one can see that she is not receiving proper treatment for her depression and thus it is getting worse. Gilman uses the wallpaper and what she sees in it to symbolizeRead Mo reThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman936 Words   |  4 PagesIn the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses this story give a voice to the women that were dealing with oppression from men. Women during the time when this story was written were almost exclusively under the dominance of males. They were mainly house wives, and did what the male forced them to do. Many women were working in the house, and not allowed to leave, consequently making them lonely and depressed. Because of this, women were not as educated as menRead MoreYellow Wallpaper Essay999 Words   |  4 PagesThe Yellow Wallpaper† Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Full name Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman) American short story writer, essayist, novelist, and autobiographer. The following entry presents criticism of Gilman s short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† (1892). The short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† by nineteenth-century feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was first published in 1892 in New England Magazine. Gilman s story, based upon her own experience with a â€Å"rest cure† for mental illness, wasRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1179 Words   |  5 Pagesby society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman experienced this oppression, especially while trying to deal with her post-partum depression. As a result, she was inspired to write the short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† in which she tells the tale of a woman that has a severe mental break due to her mental illness. The narrator is also heavily oppressed by her husband and represents the society of her time. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† expresses the oppression of women through the husband’s control over the narratorRead MoreThe Struggle For Sanity By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1528 Words   |  7 Pages The Struggle for Sanity The Narrator, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Short Story, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† has been one of the most scrutinized pieces of literature. Critics have analyzed it from various perspectives including feminist, anti-feminist, psychological to clinical. Some even claim the narrator’s work as an early feminist indictment of Victorian patriarchy. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about the narrator’s life experience afflicted with a depressive episode since adolescenceRead MoreThe Yellow Wall Paper By Charlotte Gilman1139 Words   |  5 PagesThe story â€Å"The Yellow Wall-Paper† written by Charlotte Gilman .It brings to light how much the narrator hates wallpaper and is a significant symbol portrayal of awful state. The yellow wallpaper can have a representation of many conditions and ideas, among them, the mental state of the narrator. The paper is going to survey what the yellow wallpaper represents and notice how it is being depicted over the progression of the story. In addition, it will be explored why the yellow paper is likened toRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour Analysis983 Words   |  4 PagesCharlotte Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and Kate Chopin’s â€Å"The Story of an Hour† both take place primarily in domestic spaces representative of the attitudes and feelings of each character. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† tells the story of a young woman’s decent into depression and madness, commonly attributed to the excessive and unnecessary control her husband exerts over her. â€Å"The Story of an Hour† delves into the conflicted mind of a young woman after hearing the news of her husband’s death and herRead MoreCritical Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper1511 Words   |  7 PagesCharlotte Perkins Gilman. Her work, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, addresses the reality of gender status and roles and the treatment of psychological disorders during the nineteenth century. When explicating her work through a psychological perspective, it is clear to see how Gilman uses setting, symbolism, and personification to portray a realistic view of a woman with a psychological disorder and her treatment. Charlotte Gilman applies her own experiences with her mental illnesses to the story in order to