In The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is a young woman living in the late nineteenth century who is diagnosed with mental illness by her husband due to symptoms of “nervousness”. She is treated for this condition in a way that isolates her from human activity and only causes her mental illness grow far worse. During this time period, women were thought of as being less superior than men and were expected to do whatever was asked of them, which often meant that they should not have their own differing opinions about anything. Due to this, she obeys her husband when he diagnoses her and calls for a certain treatment. The treatment that he insists for her consists of her being kept in the nursey of the upstairs attic, unable to leave or do just about anything. She is not permitted to write, go outside, care for or even see her newborn baby. She is instead forced to stay put all day alone besides her husband’s daily visits, which eventually drives her to actually become insane. This isolation caused her to see hallucinations and tear down all of the wallpaper in the room. Due to the gender roles of this time period, women were forced to go through treatments for mental illnesses that took away their humanity and only worsened their previous mental states. These types of dehumanizing treatments were common during this time period and were seen not only in a patient’s home, but also in the newly created mental institutions. 

During the nineteenth century, scientists began to try to connect certain organs of the human body with certain types of illnesses, which allowed for the emerging of several new kinds of technologies. These advancements allowed people to conclude that mental illness was a result of damaged operations in the brain. This idea of “insanity” was now connected to a long list of symptoms that ranged from fevers and speech impairment, to nervousness, sorrow, and even excitability (Newman). Due to this new wide range of symptoms, those who were diagnosed as being mentally ill or insane increased dramatically. Due to this increasing number of mentally unstable people, asylums were created in order to cure those diagnosed. The newly created asylums, for the most part, only allowed in the middle to upper-class people while the poor and homeless were put in prison or left on the streets. The irony of this system was that upon leaving these asylums, the wealthier classes often reported that they were places that had prison-like conditions (Newman). Many of the inmate’s experiences abuse, both mentally and physically, that isolated them and ultimately caused them to feel dehumanized. 

Along with being mistreated after being diagnosed with mental illness, some people were being diagnosed for reasons that were unjust. The fact that mental illness was a fairly new discovery in this time period, may have caused people to overreact when it came to diagnosing someone. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is diagnosed by her husband, John, for showing symptoms of nervousness. The narrator had also recently given birth to her first child, which could have had an impact on these symptoms she was feeling. It is not uncommon for a woman to have mood changes or feel depressed for a little while after giving birth. This common condition is called postpartum depression and is most likely what the narrator was feeling shortly after her child was born. The author of the story was treated for her condition by not being allowed to care for, or even see her baby, which only made her feel worse. In this time period the role of a woman was to simply care for the house and the children, and by taking away this away from her, it makes her feel useless and inhumane. Bateman reports that pregnancy and childbirth are often linked to dramatic shifts in a woman’s mood but it is caused by an extreme drop in your hormone levels, and does not mean that you are not able to be a mother. This could have easily been linked to the way that she had been feeling, but instead of working through it and transitioning into becoming a mother, she was diagnosed as being mentally insane and forced to be bedridden without any contact with her child. “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” (Gilman 301). Characters such as John and the nurse take away motherhood from the narrator, which worsens her mental state by allowing her to believe that she can no longer be a mother to her own child. 

While being a mother was the main role of a woman in this time period, there were other activities that were taken away from both the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and the patients of the asylums in the nineteenth century. A specific example from The Yellow Wallpaper is that in addition to not working as a mother, she is not permitted to work as a writer. “I did write for a while to spite them; but it does exhaust me a good deal- having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy disposition (Gilman 300). In addition to not being able to move or care for her child, she is also unable to even express how she is feeling. The idea that expressing your emotions is good for your mental health is not something that people realized at this time. Her husband believes that thinking about how she is feeling is the worst thing that she can do to help herself; therefore, he does not allow her to write, talk or even thing about her own emotions. Gilman admits that, “it always makes me feel bad” when talking about her husband refusing to let her speak about it. Many people during this time believed that everyone needed to act and be a certain way, and anything that strayed slightly from the “normal” mindset must have meant that the person was unstable. The doctors at this time may have believed that this was the best way to help people feel better, but eventually we became aware that these treatments are not effective in treating mental health issues. Taking away these valuable activities from a person’s life creates a strong feeling of uselessness, which is only more harmful to the mind. 

There is evidence that these treatments were dehumanizing to patients at the ending of The Yellow Wallpaper when the narrator experiences such bad hallucinations, that she believes there is a person living in the wallpaper, haunting her. On the last day of her treatment, her husband comes up to the room to get her and when he comes inside the narrator says, “I’ve got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” The isolation that she has been feeling through her long course of treatment has ultimately made her mental state grow far worse. She has torn down all of the wallpaper in the room because she feels trapped and believes that it is her only way out. Isolation will only negatively impact our minds in the long run (Newman). 

The nineteenth century was a time when the recognition of mental illness was fairly new and greatly misunderstood. The symptoms that they used to diagnose people were unjust and the treatments that they used to try to cure them were abusive and dehumanizing. Many women could not speak out against the way they were treated due to the stricter gender roles of men and woman in this time period. The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is an evident example of all of this. The young woman is diagnosed as being mentally ill due to her feelings of nervousness after giving birth to her first child, which is a fairly common feeling woman experience due to their changing hormones. Her treatment isolated her from the outside world and didn’t allow her to do her job as a mother or express how she was feeling in any way. Finally, the story relates because her diagnosis and her treatment were given by her husband, and she was demanded to be follow his orders. Gilman’s story displays how the gender roles and misunderstanding of mental illnesses in the nineteenth century were the cause of abuse of many individuals. It only makes sense that incarcerated people act as they do, their reaction might in fact be called sane (Newman).
