In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator suffers from some kind of mental disorder, which her husband, John, who is a doctor, diagnosed as nervous depression and hysterical tendencies. As a part of her treatment, the narrator’s husband confined her to a room that has horrible, yellow wallpaper. Throughout the story, the speaker’s mental and physical health conditions become worse; she obsesses over the wall paper, loses her appetite, becomes weaker, and sleeps very little. While one could argue that being confined to one room drove the narrator mad, it is highly possible that the environmental factors within the room, the symptoms they cause, and the fact that the narrator was a woman were actually the reasons for her worsening conditions.

According to B. Robert Crago and his peers, exposure to toxins, such as mold, can have a seriously negative effect on the nervous system, immune system, musculoskeletal system, and behavior. Crago and the other scientists conducted an experiment on the effects of mold exposure in which they tested patients’ health before and after being exposed to mold. After the mold exposure, patients scored highly in the areas of Obsessive-Compulsive, Anxiety, and Depression (Crago, et. al). This aspect of Crago and the other authors’ research supports the idea that there was mold in the room to which the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was exposed and that it contributed to her declining health. Throughout the story, the narrator’s behavior becomes more and more peculiar; she became obsessed with the wallpaper and every other detail within the room. She describes the wallpaper as an unclean, fungus-like yellow and as having a distinct smell that worsens in damp weather. She claims there are things about the wallpaper that only she will ever know. She sees a sub-pattern within the pattern of the wallpaper itself. This “pattern,” the color, and the distinct smell were most likely the results of mold within the wallpaper in her bedroom.  

The mold also seemed to make the narrator anxious. She was always nervous about someone finding out about her journal and not being able to see her son. She was also very worried about what her husband would think of her actions. The narrator’s husband believed she was letting her obsession with the wallpaper take over her life and that these ideas would have a negative effect on her treatment. He would not replace the wallpaper because that would be giving his wife what she wanted, and that was “the worst thing he could do” for a nervous patient with her conditions. Crago’s research showed that mold can lead to anxiety, so this information provides even more evidence that there was mold on the wallpaper which caused the narrator’s health problems.

Crago also wrote that mold exposure can have a negative effect on mental abilities such as balance, concentration, and reaction time. The narrator claims that there is very little that she is able to do, and everything takes a great effort. She even speaks about not feeling able to write, perform daily tasks, or think straight. This is because the mold in the room had an impact on her cognitive function and abilities (Crago, et. al). 

In the presence of mold, the aforementioned mental health symptoms in addition to physical health problems can be referred to as sick building syndrome (Assouline-Dayan, et. al). Assouline-Dayan and other authors wrote about their sick building syndrome research in the Journal of Asthma. According to their research, mold can easily grow within homes, especially on wallpaper, which is rich in cellulose. Because of this fact, it would make sense that the “pattern” that the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” sees on the wall is actually mold. Also, according to Assouline-Dayan, mold exposure can cause fatigue, which is also a symptom of sick building syndrome, as well as headaches and depression. The poor conditions within the narrator’s home were the reason for her deteriorating health; she most likely had sick building syndrome, along with other health problems, that may have been overlooked because of the hysteria diagnosis. John keeps her in her room to get lots of “fresh” air, but the mold made the air quality in the room very poor.  As a result of the mold exposure, the author’s fatigue becomes more severe and she loses her strength as the story continues. However, the mold also worsened; the narrator spoke of its smell and how there were always new shades of yellow, as if the mold were growing. The best way to prevent sick building syndrome is to prevent mold from growing, and since the husband and the narrator seemed unaware of the mold in their home, it was not treated (Assouline-Dayan, et. al). The untreated mold explains the narrator’s symptoms and why they became worse as the story continued.

Another study done by Edmond D. Shenassa and his peers also argue that mold can have a severe impact on mental and emotional health, as well as physical health. Their experiment suggested that living in a moldy home could make a person more susceptible to depression and its symptoms. These researchers found that mold can make a person feel as if they have no control over their home and distort their overall perception of control. Both of those symptoms are linked with depression (Shenassa, et. al). In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator has no control over the room she is in; John orders her not to leave because it would compromise the success of her treatment. With the mold-ridden wallpapers and no control of her environment, it is not surprising that the narrator suffered “nervous depression” and that her condition continued to become worse. Along with having no control of her environment, she also had no control of her life or decisions. At the beginning of the story she showed full trust and obedience towards her husband because women were considered to be inferior to men. John made all of the decisions for her; he created her schedule and chose to confine her to the room that was causing her mental stability to decline as a part of her “treatment” (Wattley). However, the narrator did begin to question her husband’s methods, most likely because of her anxiety from the mold exposure. She claimed to be able to see right through his pretend acts of love and concern over her health. 

Assouline-Dayan wrote that mold exposure can cause sick building syndrome, a type of chronic illness. Shenassa explained that chronic illness from mold exposure can also contribute to depressive symptoms. Both of these authors’ research back up the argument that the narrator’s mental and emotional health issues were byproducts of the mold that lived on the wallpaper in her room. Shenassa’s article came with the disclaimer that he and his peers did not explore the long-term effects of mold exposure. However, the narrator only lived in the moldy room over a span of three months, and it is possible for a person to be affected by mold exposure in a short period of time (Shenassa, et. al). I agree with this idea, especially since the narrator lived in the moldy room for the duration of the story. 

In another study, Gail Kinman and Miriam Griffin explained that for many people who have sick building syndrome, their symptoms go away when they leave the building with poor conditions, their symptoms disappear. Unfortunately for the narrator, she was not allowed to leave the mold-damaged building. She was forced to stay in that room and breathe in the poor quality air, which maintained her illness. Her husband, however, never experienced any of the same symptoms that the speaker displayed. This is because he did not spend much time in the home, and his symptoms diminished when he left the house. The fact that the husband did not show any symptoms supports the argument that the wife did have sick building syndrome; she spent all of her time in the house and therefore was always exposed to the mold which made her ill.  

Mary Ann Jimenez wrote about how women’s mental health was understood, or misunderstood, during the nineteenth century. Jimenez explained that it was widely accepted that women’s periods and childbirth were the main reasons behind problems with women’s mental health. She also wrote that hysteria was a common, popular diagnosis that put a wide range of mental health problems in one category and that it was thought to be caused by problems within a woman’s reproductive system. Because the narrator was a woman and recently gave birth to her son, her husband seemed to brush off her symptoms and diagnosed her with hysteria. However, as argued by Crago, Assouline-Dayan, and Shenassa, the narrator’s symptoms could have all been caused by mold in her bedroom with yellow wallpaper. Additionally, there was not a vast amount of information about mold and its health effects during this time period and that could have contributed to the misdiagnosis as well. 

Mary Ann Jimenez’s research presents the idea that women’s health was not taken very seriously and that there were many misconceptions about the causes behind mental disorders in women, including the idea that women and men should be treated differently because of their different gender roles. Wattley makes a similar argument in her article. She researched the attitudes of male doctors towards women’s health during the nineteenth century. Some male doctors believed that women complained of illness simply out of boredom, while others believed that women were controlled by their sexual organs (Wattley). Gynecological surgeries were often a treatment for women’s mental health issues because of this belief. Often, women were told to conserve their energy so they could reproduce. Male physicians also thought that women should not be educated because their sole purpose was to reproduce and be a good mother to their children, and education would make them too masculine to be a good mother (Wattley). The speaker’s husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” displayed many of these behaviors. He discouraged her from reading and writing, he told her she needed to rest, and he never took her health seriously. The narrator may not have actually been mentally ill before her treatment; she might have strayed from the expected behaviors for a woman, causing her husband to think there was something wrong with her. Then, his treatment drove her to madness. 

Other symptoms of depression include sleeping problems and loss of appetite (Shenassa, et al.) The narrator also experiences both of those symptoms. She complains of becoming tired easily, sleeping during the day, and not being able to sleep at night as she often stayed up, obsessing over the wallpaper. She also pointed out to her husband that she lost weight and did not have much of an appetite, but he did not seem to be at all concerned about her complaints or take them seriously. Because the narrator was a woman, she was not taken seriously, misdiagnosed, and did not get the treatment she needed, which allowed the mold to create more problems during her “rest” treatment. Also, because her other symptoms were overlooked, the mold in their house was untreated as well. 

However, it may have been difficult for anyone from the narrator’s time to identify these symptoms and come to the conclusion that her room was the reason behind her health conditions and mental illness. The idea of sick building syndrome did not come about until the twentieth century (Kinman, et. al). Despite the lack of knowledge of sick building syndrome, the narrator’s husband could have paid more attention to all of her symptoms, listened to her complaints, and moved her to a place that would be more comfortable. Because women’s health was not taken as seriously as men’s health, her opinions and requests were ignored. If her husband had listened to her request to change rooms, replaced the wallpaper, or taken her wellbeing more seriously in general, she would have improved. If there were not specific behaviors that were expected and accepted for the two different genders during this time period, she may not have been seen as hysteric and depressed. She would have been taken seriously and gotten the treatment she needed. The narrator had real health issues related to the mold that were overlooked and went undiagnosed.

Overall, it is clear that the husband’s prescribed treatment for the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the cause of her downfall to insanity. The rest treatment that was supposed to make her better was actually the poison that was killing her. She was stuck in a mold-infested room for months, and her condition only got worse. The articles written by Crago, Assouline-Dayan, and Shenassa all support the argument that there was mold in the bedroom and that it caused a great deal of mental, physical, and emotional health problems for the narrator. She suffered from depression, anxiety, and fatigue, which are all symptoms of sick building syndrome, or mold exposure (Assouline-Dayan). Both Crago and Kinman’s research support the argument that the mold caused the behavioral changes, such as anxiety and irritability. Because she was stuck in a room with mold in the wallpaper, these conditions grew more and more severe as the story continued. The mold continued also grow worse since, just like her symptoms, it was not treated properly.

 The narrator had no sense of control over many aspects of her life, specifically the environment in which she lived. Her husband made all the decisions for her. She believed everything he said and was completely obedient to him. Wattley and Jimenez make arguments that women were not taken seriously by physicians in this time period and that their medical treatments were based on false conceptions about the female body. Their articles support the idea that the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” did not get the treatment she needed because of how male physicians saw women in this time period. The narrator was trapped; she could not get the medications and treatments she actually needed, and the treatment she was receiving was only causing her state of mental, emotional, and physical health to decline. She was driven to insanity because of her husband’s ideas about mental illnesses in women and the accepted treatments for such conditions. 

It is true that the narrator suffered from mental illness. It is also true that being confined to the bedroom with the yellow wallpaper drove her insane. However, she did not become insane solely from her confinement. She was driven insane by the moldy environment, the symptoms caused by the environment, and her husband’s sexist disregard of her wellbeing. “The Yellow Wallpaper” highlights the problems and lack of knowledge in the area of women’s health care in the nineteenth century by presenting the fact that a factor other than a woman’s faulty reproductive system, such as mold, can be the underlying cause of her health problems. 
