Yellow Wallpaper Illness

Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” highlights how an illness can worsen without proper care and attention. The speaker is introduced as a married woman spending the summer in an abandoned mansion because John, her husband, felt like the mansion would help her recover from her illness: a “temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency.” Specifically, John suggests that his wife stay in the nursery because its “air and sunshine galore” would help her recover; however, the time spent in the nursery only worsens the speaker’s condition. Items in the nursery such as the intricately designed yellow wallpaper, the speaker’s notebook, and the image of Jane, the woman trapped behind the wallpaper, cause
Instead of sleeping at night, the narrator “kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till [she] felt creepy.” This demonstrates how much the narrator has been absorbed into the wallpaper. The wallpaper now controls the narrator to the point where she sleeps by day and examines the wall paper at night. By spending more nights to analyze the wallpaper, the narrator notices that “it changes as the light changes.” At this point, it is clear that the narrator has been utterly consumed by the wallpaper. for the narrator to see an inanimate object move reveals that she had been trapped in a figment of her own imagination. As the narrator “watch[es] [the wallpaper] always,” she implicitly discloses that the wallpaper has trapped her in a manner similar to how her husband trapped her in the
The narrator provides evidence that classifies the figure she sees as a real being: “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down.” This quote reveals how close the narrator is to completely being insane. When the narrator tears down the wallpaper in an attempt to free the trapped figure she states, “I’ve got out at last,’… ‘in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!”. At this moment, the narrator has been completely consumed by her own reality. She names the figure Jane and states that she is Jane. The figure behind the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator. The figure is trapped behind the wallpaper as the narrator is trapped in her own reality and in the nursery by her husband. Jane’s “temporary nervous depression” is at its peak at this point because she cannot distinguish her own reality from actual