Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the reader gets to experience a roller coaster of emotions and events throughout the short story. The author gives details about the characters and the narrator's situation, however the story remains unclear, but I believe that that the narrator is not driven into insanity by her husband or by the rest cure, but that she is already mad and in an institution. At the beginning, we are introduced to the Narrator of the story. She begins to question her own health. She mentions to herself that she does not get better, informing the reader that she is ill. Wanting to understand the causes of her illness, she writes in her journal that her husband, John, “is a physician, and ( . . . ) perhaps …show more content…

She makes remarks about the house they're staying in for the course of the summer. The narrator cannot exactly say what surprises her but finds that “there is something queer” about the house and the wallpaper in her room. She describes the house in romantic terms as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, or even a haunted house” and questioned how they could afford it. As the story goes on, the narrator begins to describe her room. She says her room must’ve been a nursery for young children. She says that the wallpaper is torn off in some spots, there’s a nailed down bed, scratches and gouges on the floor, and the the windows have bars across them. With the evidence the narrator describes the house as, I do believe she wasn’t staying in an actual house. She is actually in an insane asylum getting treated with Rest Cure which was a popular treatment in the 19th century. I think that John’s sister is actually a nurse there because she takes care of the narrator and tried to persuade her not to write. In addition, the narrator has noticed the gates that lock and there are separate little houses for gardeners and other people. This is a hint that there are certainly some other patients around because she sees several women in the garden and behind certain windows. In addition, it has to be clearly discerned that the protagonist has “a schedule prescription for each hour in the day” like in a hospital and that John regards her as a “nervous

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