Escape By Madness

5 Pages 1362 Words

Escape by Madness

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story of a husband’s attempt to cure his wife of her “temporary nervous depression”, by isolating her from her newborn, three miles from town, in a large mansion where she is to spend the majority of her time in a room alone, resting. Gilman shows the process of her mental demise as repression and supervision force her to withdraw inward and bottle her feelings. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman illustrates the internal conflict the woman experiences by showing her struggles with her role and place in society.
The nursemaid and the narrator’s sister- in -law keep their distance because they take for granted that her husband, a physician, knows what is best for her. John, her husband, decides that the “rest cure” is a necessary measure for a recovery from her nervous or postpartum depression. As Heather Kirk Thomas points out, the story “addresses Dr. S. Weir Michael’s famous rest cure and his treatment of . . . deliberating postpartum depression” (624).
I take phosphates or phosphites-which ever it is-and tonics, and air and exercise, and journeys, and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again. . . . I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. (470 Gilman)
This excerpt illustrates how her husband manipulates her life regulating her parsimoniously every hour of the day while she remains silent, preferring to sneak around behind his back rather than openly defy him. The trip to the colonial mansion is for her benefit. Therefore, she may “rest” while renovations are made to their house. The narrator’s husband treats her like a child; their relationship is father daughter, not man and wife.
Clearly, this is a patriarchal society. Not only does her husband suppress her actions but he also ...