Although mental health is often downplayed or stigmatized in today’s society, the opinions of those suffering from mental illness hail in comparison to those in the late 19th century.  The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in an attempt to shed light on the prevalent, but rarely discussed, mental health issues among housewives during this time period.  Despite the fact that human beings can never truly know how someone else is feeling, Gilman writes in a way that allows the audience to experience the innermost opinions and emotions of the narrator as she progressively spirals into a state of madness.  Through the use of first person perspective, the audience can see the complexity of the narrator’s thoughts, which allows the reader to gain a greater understanding of mental health issues that were often ignored or improperly treated during this period in time.

Through Gilman’s use of a first person perspective, she is able to capture a woman’s innermost thoughts while she is going mad due to the pressures of being a housewife and new mother.  By writing the story as a series of journal entries Gilman is able to express how the narrator’s mental illness develops over time.  At the beginning of the story, the narrator is only slightly bothered by the wallpaper and requests for her husband to change it.  However, by the end of the story she is completely engulfed in her thoughts of the women in the wallpaper that she cannot even sleep at night.  Near the end of their stay in the house, she writes, “But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (Gilman, 307).  By using first person in statements such as this one, the reader can get a greater sense of the panic and frustration that the narrator is experiencing.  The audience can see a shift in the woman from mildly uncomfortable to complete inability to function.  Gilman’s writing progresses into a fast tempo with a constant change in tone.  The narrator grows more frantic and distraught as her journal entries progress which are emotions that could not be brought out as well had Gilman not written the story in first person.      

Gilman’s literary strategies have a strong effect on the audience’s emotions and their abilities to sympathize with the narrator.  The reader is able to experience her inability to fulfil the role of an ideal housewife and the strain that puts on her.  For nearly the entirety of the story, the narrator is attempting to hide the complexity of her mental illness from her husband, who seems to think that simply resting will help her.  By getting an intimate look at the narrator’s journal, which she has kept a secret from everyone else in her life, the audience is able to understand her thoughts in their realest form.  As the audience goes through the narrator’s journey into madness with her, the reader is able to sympathize with her.  The audience is able to see that she truly does want to, “get better,” but despite following her husband’s directions her mental illness still continues to grow to the point that she has no control over her own thoughts.  The use of journal entries to tell the narrator’s story allows the reader to gain a greater understanding for her feelings, which is something that the people around the narrator were unable to do. 

One would think that the narrator’s husband, being that he is a well-known doctor, would be able to help treat his wife’s mental illness.  Unfortunately, during the time period, even the most well trained physicians were unable to successfully treat mental illness because there was a lack of research being done on mental disorders.  John, the narrator’s husband, specifically told her that she should not be writing in her journal and that her journal was bad for her.  It was not until 2013 that the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing released a study on how creative writing can actually assist in the treatment of mental disorders.  In their research they stated, “that the therapeutic value of creative writing might be most effectively achieved when there is a focus on the processes and techniques of writing, and not just on self-expression,” (King et al, 450).  John also deprived the narrator of social interactions which, according to European Psychiatry, “Positive social interactions have in turn been shown to exert powerful beneficial effects on health outcomes and longevity,” (Park et al, 1).  At the time, physicians had done so little research on mental illness that they had yet to find an effective way to treat patients so although John thought he was helping his wife to recover from what he thought was just minor depression, he was actually hindering her recovery.

By looking at Gilman’s use of first person perspective, the reader gets a better grasp on the intricacy of the narrator’s mind.  Through this, the reader is able to gain a greater understanding of mental illness for housewives during this time period.  Gilman’s writing encouraged society to be more accepting of mental illness and to let go of the stigma often associated with mental disorders.  In a 2008 article on the recovery of mental illness, Tom Craig stated, “Long before the discovery of effective medical and psychological treatments for mental illness, it was known that better outcomes could be obtained if people were treated with respect and dignity, in settings that emphasized collaboration rather than coercion,” (Webb et al, 62).  Gilman was trying to get this message across because although they may not have had the research to properly treat mental illness, they did have the ability to support and respect people with mental disorders.  Gilman not only increased awareness of mental illness for her time period, but for generations to come.     
