Causes Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story that continues to transcend time with its’ themes of feminism and mental health issues. The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper must struggle not only against her own mind, but the oppressive nature of her husband and her horribly inaccurate treatment plan, the combination of which destroys her sense of self. Throughout the story the narrator shares her experiences of her mental illness in a day to day basis until she completely loses her sanity. This just shows how serious it can be to ignore a type of mental illness for too long.
One of the main causes for her insanity is the treatment she is receiving by her husband. Right when the story begins the narrator moves into a home with her husband and new born child to stay for a few …show more content…

Part of the reason for this feeling is because the family rented this beautiful, big house for a price that is way below market value. Since her husband believes that the best treatment for her is to lock her away in the house until she gets better she has a lot of down time. So for the first few days she explores what little she can and occasionally writes about her feelings, but it did not take long for her to notice the ugly yellow wallpaper in their bedroom, which she presumes was an old nursery. As soon as she sees the yellow wallpaper she immediately gets fixated on it, she tries to study it and understand it as if there is some deep underlying meaning to the yellow wallpaper. Since she could never leave the house she started letting her obsession of the wallpaper get the better of her, day and night she would just stare at the paper repeatedly saying that she will figure out the pattern behind the

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