Alex Foley
Blog Option 4
10-17-13
While I cannot honestly state that this short story mirrors
anything in my personal life, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman is one of the most memorable works I have read all semester. I have
always been fascinated by psychology, especially when it relates to mental
illness. The fact that the entire field of medicine is unknown and different for
each person is what makes mental illnesses so interesting. As a business major,
I currently plan to become a pharmaceutical sales representative, since science
is not my strongest field.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the protagonist seems to suffer
from a form of depression that slowly leads to psychosis and an eventual
implied suicide. Gilman, known for her feminist tendencies, chooses to portray
the narrator as a woman who is forced to rely on her husband. This is
representative of the era in which this story was written, where depression
could be cured by isolation and women were not allowed to write.
Today, advances in medicine and psychiatry have remanded the
cure for depression and other mental illnesses, instead opting to treat the
patient with a mixture of drugs and therapy. It is interesting to consider what
would have happened to the narrator if she had been given this kind of
treatment. The reader knows she enjoys writing and appears to be proficient,
especially considering she was a woman. The narrator may have penned something
that changed the world. Instead, she was banned from pursuing her passion and forced
to become almost a child again; without free will or the ability to take care
of herself. “The Yellow Wallpaper” makes me feel grateful that I was born in an
era where women are more equal than men and mental illnesses are treated with
the attention they deserve.
Gilman,
Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." American Gothic Tales.
Ed. Joyce
C. Oates. New York: Penguin Group, 1996. 52-64. Print.
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