Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Mental Illness

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Gilman used steps to achieve the perfect build up into revealing how unreliable the narrator actually is. Gilman’s first step was to introduce a starting issue. Before her husband and she went to bed for the night, the narrator made a regrettable comment on her health."‘Better in body perhaps -’ I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word. ‘My darling,’ said he, ‘I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours’" (Perkins Gilman 652). Here, the narrator’s issue is her mental health. …show more content…

Learning of her nervous condition, known today as anxiety, and depression leads her to seek help. Seeing that her husband is a doctor, he happens to know that rest is the perfect cure. Not only that, he also knows what is favorable, along with what is unfavorable for her condition. John as a high standing physician of his time warns his wife, the narrator, that talking about it will affect her condition. Keeping in her thoughts along with her feelings cannot be healthy. "Repression cannot be healthful and as the protagonist grows quieter, she is becoming more and more mad" (Wagner-Martin 291). Her husband does mean well. He loves her, but he is overbearing. John feels the need to be in control of everything she does to make sure her condition does not worsen. To him, he believes that talking about her illness will cause it to worsen. Nevertheless, he does not want that. To combat that, he enforces that she does not talk about it. Although bottling up feelings can cause explosive consequences when done for an extended period of time. She has been in that house for three months, so the whole time she was getting restless.

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