Postnatal depression can sometimes be hard to notice if you have never seen it before.  The main character in The Yellow Wallpaper suffered from postnatal depression, which is a clinical form of depression. It affects more than 1 in 10 women after childbirth and can even affect men but it is less common (NHS Choices). Her husband, John, was a high standing physician therefore he should have caught on faster especially since she changed drastically right after having their baby. He never tried to hurt his wife while he took care of her, but his actions helped lead to her insanity.  It took him a very long time to realize what he was doing was not helping the narrator, but actually hindering her from becoming less depressed. In The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the main character goes through postnatal depression with the incorrect treatment.

The narrator, suffers from postnatal depression. A researcher, Chung-Hey Chen, found that there are four main stages when going through postnatal depression, “(1) shattered role identity, (2) Feeling trapped and breaking down, (3) Struggling for self-integrity and (4) Regaining vitality” (Chen 4). Although she did not show clear symptoms for all the steps that Chen talks about in his article, she does go through them all. The narrator does not directly say she has no one to talk to, which is common according to Chen's first stage, but neither her husband nor her brother believe anything is wrong. This leaves her by herself because she feels like they just will not listen when she talks about her problems. Chen's second stage is shown loosely throughout the whole story. It starts with not living in the room she wants, to feeling trapped within the room and seeing a woman. This woman is a mental figure of herself that is trapped inside the wallpaper just like the narrator. The third stage is shown clearer by having the narrator distract herself with the wallpaper which made her feel like she had, “something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch” (Gilman 308). The final stage is depicted the most thoroughly. The narrator rips down the wallpaper and sets herself free taking hold of her life again while proclaiming, “‘I've got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!’” (Gilman 312). Each stage in postnatal depression truly shows the narrator’s honesty about her illness that led her to insanity.

       Postnatal depression can be caused by a few different factors, which of course the main character also had in her life. One main symptom is having “a poor relationship with your partner” (NHS Choices). The narrator resented her husband, he never let her do what she wanted and forced her into doing things she did not want to. Her husband “hate[d] to have [her] write a word” so she always hid it from him even though it was obvious that she loved to write. “Having no close family or friends to support you” is another key factor for causing postnatal depression, yet the narrator really did not have this problem she just felt very alone (NHS Choices). She never saw her family taking care of her and supporting her more like they were ignoring her. The main character is left “alone a good deal [,] John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie…[leaves] me alone” (Gilman 304). Her husband knew he would be away and did not to leave his wife so he his sister was in charge. Since the baby was young the only way for her to help and support the main character as she struggled through her mental illness was to leave her alone and care for the baby. This causes the main character to feel evidently alone, ignored and like no one is supporting her.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, it is very apparent that the narrator suffers from depression. Her husband, John, is a physician of high standing and does not believe that his wife is sick. Mary, the husband's sister, has taken over most of the narrator’s responsibilities at the husband's request, “[John] takes all care [of the baby away] from [her]... [so the narrator can] have perfect rest and all the air [she] could get” (Gilman 301). John has chosen for him and his wife to sleep in a room that the narrator does not like. This causes the narrator to slowly go crazy. John does not allow the narrator to do much and forces her to sit inside her room for hours. The story depicts her “[lying] there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately” (Gilman 306). One study shows that “exercise and mental illness have confirmed the effectiveness of exercise in the treatment of both depression (Cooney et al. 2013) and schizophrenia (Gorczynski and Faulkner 2010)” (Stanton 2). This proves that the way John was treating the narrator was actually worse for her condition. In many scenes he hinders the improvement of her depression, such as when he picked her up and carried her all the way to their room where she again spent hours just lying there staring at the wallpaper.

In The Yellow Wallpaper the main character suffers through postnatal depression alone. Although baby blues can often be confused with postnatal depression it is very different and can continue for months if not treated properly. Postnatal depression is caused not by hormonal changes as most people believe, but rather it is caused by many different factors. Since the main character felt so alone in her life she had trouble getting through postnatal depression. Her life could have been so much better if her husband supported her in what she liked to do and allowed her to do activates that she enjoyed. Instead of forcing her to stay and hindering her from going out and exercising he lead to her demise. He shoved a wedge between them, even though he loved her and would never purposely mistreat his wife, he mistreated her very serious illness.
