Mental health has been swept under the rug for decades, especially women’s. The story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in 1890 zeros in on exactly that. The story itself is from the point of view of a woman who has just had a baby and is most likely suffering from post-partum depression. But due to the lack of mental health information had at the time she is misdiagnosed as having “nervousness.” She is locked away in a single room by her husband in hopes that this will cure her but instead makes matters worse. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is placed in the middle of a mental health reform yet fails to exhibit the ways that it was reformed. Although it does accurately depict the way a mentally ill woman would have been treated and how they were to remain in their stereotypical gender roles. 

Since the narrator is placed in a room by her husband she begins an obsession with the pattern of the wallpaper, this is a result of her having nothing else to focus on. “On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.” This particular quote is assuming that she is in her normal mind but at this point in the story she may not be. She soon fixates on the wallpaper to an unhealthy degree eventually leading to her ripping it off the wall. “’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!’” (Perkins 312). She believes that she has freed herself but at this point she has also lost her sanity. All of this due to a misdiagnosis and her husband, the doctor, locking her away as treatment. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency what is one to do?” This story being placed in 1890, which was a time of great improvements in the mental health field but after reading the story there is little evidence to prove that any improvements have been made. 

During the 1800’s “life expectancy increased and infant mortality declined, sickness gradually ceased to be endemic” this brought about the “ante-bellum period.” This period was focused on “self-help in health matters, public hygiene, dietary reform, temperance, hydro-therapy, and physiological instruction.” (Morantz 490). Although the period was mainly the result of male contributions, women took up a central role in promoting good health held a third of membership in the American Physiological Society. Both gender focused on females during their work. This being because women were expected to school their children and be able to do so properly. The view of women gradually began to change with this new role of promoting good health; “women in her character as wife and mother is only second to the deity in the influence that she exerts on the physical, the intellectual, and the moral interests of the human race, and that her education should be adapted to qualify her in the highest degree to cherish those interests in the wisest and best manner.” (Morantz 492). Despite the role women had in the health field they were still seen as nurturers, now not only to their own family but to the whole of the human race.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” focuses on the growing madness inside the narrator’s head but does give vague glimpses of the stereotypical gender roles women suffered from. An example of this would be one day while the narrator is studying her surroundings and Jennie, her husband’s sister, comes in. “She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession.” (Perkins 303). In this instance Jennie embodies the ideal woman. The narrator sees this and incorporates it into whatever she sees, even the wallpaper. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over… And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern it strangles so: I think that is why it has so many heads.” This particular view occurs when she has been in the room for some time and her madness is worsening. It could be blamed on her madness causing her to hallucinate but it could also be how the narrator sees women, perhaps how she sees herself. She is the woman, trapped in her room, running around only to get nowhere. She is imprisoned by the pattern on the wall just as the woman inside the pattern is. 

The narrator’s imprisonment isn’t only metaphorically within the wallpaper she is also confined to a bedroom by her husband, John. “He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.” The heavy bedframe and the barred windows, and the gate all provide a physical way of isolation. “There are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.” The area around the house also reinforces the imprisonment of the narrator. Her husband isolates her socially as well. “John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.” She is isolated in most everyway. Although this was once typical treatment of a women being mentally ill it no longer held reason to believe that it helped and was being thinned out from the treatments. 

The narrator is in a chamber so she cannot get out. Being stuck in a chamber she is looking around but nobody is helping her they are only holding her back, especially her husband. She can see everything that is going on around her but nothing outside can see what is happening inside her chamber, or her head. Her madness only gets worse eventually leading to a full mental breakdown while her husband does nothing to help the situation. Thus proving that her isolation treatment didn’t work. The strides that had been made up until this point in history are not reflected in the story due to the continued use of isolation as a treatment. It also didn’t help that she was misdiagnosed. Overall, this story exemplifies the problems that occurred prior to the mental health revolution despite the time period that it was written. 