Women’s mental health and the assumptions that come along with it are shown in both “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and the movie Girl, Interrupted. Although these two works are different mediums, they come together because they are dealing with the same subject. In the time that both of the pieces were written women were still considered to be the Victorian woman stereotype, which included them staying home and taking care of the house and family. Many women at this time didn’t believe in psychiatry, and thought that it was one of the multiple ways that society controlled women. In both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Girl, interrupted we can see both psychiatry in action and the way that society thought of women.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1892 by Gilman, at the time women had a certain stereotype about themselves. Women were known to stay at home and take care of the house and children, and didn’t have much say in anything else. In the novel, the female narrator tells readers that she is suffering from, “nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (300). She tells readers that her husband John has taken her to a vacation house for the summer. As she continues to describe the house it is apparent that she isn’t at a “colonial mansion” (299) and in fact, it seems as if she is in either a hospital or an asylum. Her husband thinks that it is best for her to stay isolated from others, so she sleeps in a bedroom alone. In the bedroom there are bars on the windows, that she believes are from the previous owners. She thinks that she is living in a nursery and that those bars were to keep the children from climbing out the windows. The female narrator constantly says that she thinks the treatment that her husband, John, is giving her is not working. She also is always telling her husband that she thinks she is sick, but her husband who is “a physician of high standing,” (300) and her brother tell her that she is wrong. He thinks that it is good for her to be away from people, and the things that “stress” her out, but she thinks that some sort of freedom would be beneficial. She resorts to writing down her feelings in a diary, but John doesn’t know about this. One day she starts to notice the wallpaper in the room she is staying in and becomes obsessed with it. The wallpaper begins to control her thoughts and she thinks that she sees a woman trying to escape. In the end she tears all of the wallpaper off of the walls, in hopes of freeing the woman trapped, which serves as a parallel to herself.

Girl, interrupted is set years after “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but times hadn’t changed that much. It is 1967, and although women do have more rights, it is still believed that women are less than men. Susanna Kaysen is the main character. In high school she drank a bottle of vodka and ate a bottle of aspirin with the intention to kill herself. She is then sent to a mental hospital after only a twenty-minute appraisal of her mental health. She is sent with the intent to only stay a few weeks but ends up staying for about two years. Kaysen doesn’t think that she is as crazy as the other girls that are in the facility. She doesn’t think that she needs medicine to make her sleep, or needs to be checked on every hour or so. Over time she gets used to it, and begins to make friends with the girls. She becomes friends with one particular girl named, Lisa, who has been there for eight years. She is a rebel and controls most of the girls in the hospital. For a long time, Susanna falls into Lisa’s ways and refuses to accept the treatment that she needs. It isn’t until she saw one of her friends kill herself because of Lisa’s hurtful words, that she realized what she was actually there for. She finally begins listening to the advice of the counselor and doing what she is supposed to and eventually gets out. Before she leaves she speaks her mind and opinions to some of the other girls, which also encourages them to eventually get out.

Within “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Girl, interrupted the amount of similarities is astonishing but there are also some differences too. Obviously, both of the main characters are suffering from a mental illness that makes them different from others. They were both claimed to be insane, and although they might not have actually been in the beginning by the end, both of the characters were questioning their sanity. They both are sent to places where they had to choice to leave until they get better. They also were both sent to these facilities by people who they thought loved and cared about them. It was hard for them to see the decision as wrong because they trusted the people that sent them away so much. They both are being dominated by men who will decide when is the right time to let them out. Both of the main characters keep a journal where they can release what they are feeling inside. Because it is so hard for people to listen and truly understand what they are going through, it is easier for them to write it down. This was one of the biggest similarities between the two women. There is also similarities between Daisy, one of the girls in the facility with Susanna, and the female narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Daisy was released from the facility about halfway through the film. Her father bought her a house that was filled with yellow wallpaper. Her only job was to take care of the house and stay in control of her womanly duties. Eventually, she was tired of feeling like a puppet and did the only thing that she felt she could really control, and that was to take her own life. Similarly, the female narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” at the end began to also feel like she wasn’t in control of her disease and that she couldn’t get the treatment she needed. This ultimately led to her going crazy at the end. There are differences in the stories too. First off, Susanna knows that she is an asylum while the female narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” just thinks that she is at a vacation house with her husband for the summer. Also, at the end of Girl, interrupted Susanna got better. She used the advice given to her by her counselor and got out of the facility. On the other hand, the female narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper, “only got worse. The intense and smothering care of her husband drove her completely insane. So the difference is that the treatment designed for Susanna ended up actually working and the treatment that was intended for the female narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” didn’t.

At the time if women weren’t within the boundaries of a typical Victorian woman, she was deemed as “abnormal” or “insane.” Just because a woman didn’t think like other women, she was deemed as crazy. The social expectations and the treatment given to these women was what was insane. Once a woman was thought to be insane by a man, there really was no fighting it. Through both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Girl, interrupted we can see the psychiatry in action and the way that different women dealt with it. Although the problems are shown thorough different mediums, at different time periods, and with different results, readers can still draw of similarities that bring the two works together
