“The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Introduction

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is an overstated description of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's personal experiences. In the year1887, shortly after birth of her daughter, Gilman began to suffer from a serious depression. She was referred to Silas Weir Mitchell, one of the foremost specialists in women's nervous disorders in nineteenth century, who diagnosed Gilman with neurasthenia and prescribed a “rest cure” of forced inactivity. Weir Mitchell accepted that nervous despondency was a outcome of overactive nerves and organised Gilman to cease all forms of creative undertaking, encompassing composing, for the rest of her life. The goal of the treatment was to promote domesticity and calm her agitated nerves (Mitchell, 134).

Psychological diagnosis of narrator

Gilman representation of this treatment in "The Yellow Wallpaper" clearly shows the struggle women face when trying to get a sense of self without being seen as unhealthy. In history, the yellow wallpaper becomes a symbol of the restriction Rest Cure and the Cult of domesticity, which sought to secure women the ideal of femininity and silence individual voices.

In 1873, the American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, presented what he called "the rest cure," whose main function was to treat "hysterical girls the class women's emotional problems blood thinner" (Mitchell, 37). This "treatment" to women confined to bed, where he would stay for months at a time, limits any intellectual activity, like reading or writing the first few weeks, and often include severe isolation. Instead of serving the healing purposes for which it was conceived, this treatment usually produces a very negative effect. Patients either physically frail and became more common mental illness due to restrictive confinement.

Gilman wrote the story not only to change the image of a man of neurasthenia, but to use history as a symbol of oppression of women in a paternalistic society. For starters, we know the name of the narrator's husband (John), but not yours. She is almost anonymous; their identity is the wife of John. This imbalance of power extends to other areas of their relationship. John dominates, but in a paternalistic way ultimately. His strong character, practical, and the masculine stereotype is skeptical of the seemingly weak, "feminine" disorder (such as neurasthenia and other mental illnesses are often classified), and he does not, it diagnoses the problem and prescribe the cure. When he says to exercise self-control over their irritation with him, the effect is ironic that controls almost everything about it and even feel ungrateful for not appreciating her enough support.

The main function of control of John on it, as with the control of Mitchell Gilman, is its inhibition of writing. Although the writing feels would help him recover, as found Gilman, John believes that only the juices of its strength. It stifles creativity and intellect and domesticated position requires a woman without power. The act of hiding your writing every time John is round is similar to the way literary women in the 18 th century and until the late 19 (when "The Yellow Wallpaper" was ...