The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

To learn is to create; it is the ability to build on an individual's surroundings and awareness. To have control, to know, to teach. Many argue that education is the key and that being able to learn something new each day is the sign of a healthy brain. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, elaborates on this idea of how mental health is correlated to a provocative environment. She writes about a woman who had been kept in solitude to cure her postpartum depression and through this she loses her wellness. The story demonstrates how, oftentimes, intellectual progression keeps us grounded and stable giving us the ability to be aware of ideas beyond ourselves.

Gilman presents that a strictly consistent schedule can not only
Continuing through the story we find her more persistent and aware about this wallpaper which we come to see is a foreshadowing of her mental health. Her description starts with her current state; “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study”, here she’s speaking about how her depression makes everything seem boring, something that's constantly looking for something exciting or interesting. Jane tried to find interest in this new home she was put in, she wanted to see her cousins, she wanted to write, she wanted to do anything stimulating. Then she goes to describe the pattern as “lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions”. By the end of the story we see her enter this realm of madness, where she goes from being Jane, to the women behind the wallpaper. She goes to describe how the women is hiding during daytime, when she would most often be sleeping, to how this women traveled in the scenery out the window. This can be perceived as a reference on how she herself wants to be free. Not being able to do anything can send an individual into a state of great craziness.. She has to rip out the wallpaper in order to feel proper satisfaction. Her awareness solely becomes to get this woman out or follow her. She in turn becomes less aware of her