The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is written in a diary like form and is told in the first-person narrative as told by the narrator and protagonist of the story, Jane. The story spans across three months, which includes John, who is a doctor, trying to cure his wife. He gets help through Weir Mitchell who believes her “nervous condition” is a result of "intellectual stimulation” which can change a women physically and psychologically. The first time you are introduced to the narrator she appears to be sane, but as the story is continued the reader can start to see the narrator turning into a more destructive character. The structure of the short story changes as the mental disorder of the narrator changes for the worse - it mirrors Jane and her thoughts. Through this, the reader is given a inside look into the narrator's brain and thoughts, allowing it to let the reader understand what the narrator is going through. Unlike, her husband, the reader gets an intimate view of the narrator’s mental breakdown. 

 In the Encyclopedia of Sociology there is a chapter solely dedicated to mental illness and mental disorders. It was published in 2001 and discusses how even today, social scientists still don’t agree about what mental illness is, let alone what the central causes are or what the most effective treatments should be. The article goes more into depth with the timeline of mental illness dating back to 1952 where only 60 mental disorders were defined, then again in 1968, with an increase to 145 defined. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), includes an explanation and discussion of how someone’s background and personal information (culture, age, and gender) should be examined and thoroughly kept in mind when diagnosing someone with a mental disorder or giving them therapy and or treatment. Still to this day, there is a big controversy that surrounds the issue of the premenstrual syndrome. 

People in this modern age of medicine don’t know if it is a medical or psychological condition, or whether it is socially acceptable or not. The fact that in this day and age with everything we know about mental illness; that we still do not know the exact definition of premenstrual syndrome is an example of political, social, economic, and diagnostic concerns. This quote: "the prejudice that women's hormones are a cause of mental illness"  is a perfect explanation of what it was like to be a women and deal with anything that wasn’t classified as “normal”. The chapter goes onto to explain that by ignoring the pattern and diagnosis of symptoms of a disorder into a single case allows valuable information to be lost that explains the nature of the illness.  A result of this is that the causes of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems are ignored. 

This specific section and chapter in the Encyclopedia of Sociology will be significant for my essay because it talks about the issues that the main character, the narrator (Jane), in The Yellow Wallpaper is suffering from. The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892, and if mental illness was still not fully defined almost a century later, in 1952, than at the time the book came out it was still a stigma  and not even a topic of discussion for most. The chapter from the Encyclopedia of Sociology went onto to discuss women suffering from a mental illness and how they are more prone to suffer from depression and anxiety and even more so; “all studies report that married women consistently show higher levels of depression and anxiety than married men”. The narrator is “prescribed” fish oil and to seclude herself from anyone other than her husband. This just proves the lack of attention and education mental illness was given. As a result of this, it is significant for the reader to understand that women were placed in mental hospitals as this time for reasons not even close to having an “illness”. Some of those reasons for admission were novel reading, superstition, over study of religion, laziness, and kicked in the head by a horse. As you can see none of those are even considered an “illness” they are all acts that some doctor, presumably a male, believes to be abnormal and therefore are considered to be a “mental illness.” 

The chapter is significant in relation to The Yellow Wallpaper as it goes into depth about how mental illness was treated and how even a doctor at the time the short story was set, could look past a mental illness and was determined to not classify it as a real “illness”. It is really significant to recognize that the narrator, Jane, is suffering from a devastating kind of depression she has postpartum depression due to her not being capable of seeing her newborn baby. The authors of this Encyclopedia explain how “victims” of mental illness were treated - they were treated like inhuman beings, which ultimately lead to their mental illness taking over and controlling almost everything they do - just as Jane was treated by being confined to nursery like room which only fed to her paranoia and hallucinations. 

In The Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, postpartum depression is defined as “ a depression that can range from mild to suicidal and can occur anytime after delivery up to one year later.” As stated earlier, the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper suffers from this disease and “sickness” which nourishes into a nervous breakdown. The Encyclopedia also offers insight about how the depression is conceived. Some research indicate that a change in a brain chemical that controls the release of cortisol can be the cause of it while other researchers seems to believe that postpartum depression is from "maternity blues" or the stress from the pregnancy and from the fact the delivery can be difficult. There is some research that suggests that postpartum depression is unlikely to occur in a person who has suffered through “ psychologically uncomplicated pregnancy and past history”. Although, while in The Yellow Wallpaper it may seem the relationship between the narrator and her husband is a bit toxic there is no connection between postpartum depression and marital status. However, unlike the narrator, there seems to be an increase of developing this depression after a pregnancy loss. This encyclopedia entry is significant in relation to The Yellow Wallpaper as it goes into depth about the symptoms of postpartum depression and how it can be prevented and what the proper treatments should be; which at the time this short story was published the treatments would have been helpful for the furtherance of the narrator’s (and readers going through the same thing) health.

With The Yellow Wallpaper being a short story about mental illness, The Encyclopedia of Sociology and The Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders are two great resources for any individual living with a mental illness. While, the sickness could be: postpartum depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that should be looked in terms of what not to do while suffering from a mental illness (especially postpartum depression). At the time it was published it was, there was no treatment other than leaving the “sick” person alone and allowing time to “heal” them which only lead to their thoughts taking over. Anyone, suffering from postpartum depression should not follow the narrator of this story. It will only further your disease and make your time of recovery a harder one. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has said, “There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver”. Her words are reflected in the work of her short story where it is exemplified that their is no difference between the “mentality of men or women”, in The Yellow Wallpaper due to the fact that a woman who has a mental illness cannot get better due to her husband’s lack of belief in the “illness”. 
