Mental Breakdown In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Mental Breakdown
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, there are three main factors that lead up to the mental breakdown of the narrator. The narrator in this story is a woman who wants more from life than being a housewife. These factors are, her “nervous depression” (p.1670) in the beginning, the lack of contact with anyone but her husband throughout their stay at the colonial mansion, and the fact that she is locked in a room with such an eerie feeling. These three factors combined is enough to cause anyone have a mental breakdown.
To begin with, the nervous depression that the narrator is suffering from starts the process of the mental breakdown. Her husband, John, says that “there is really nothing the matter with

one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (p.1670). This statement leads the narrator to believe she is even crazier because her husband is saying she is not sick, when she knows she is, and then treating her as if she actually is sick. To make matters worse, the narrator is not allowed to be around her baby, she expresses this when she says, “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” (p.1672)
Next, the lack of contact with anyone but her husband, and Mary, the nanny makes her feel neglected and stir crazy. The narrator expresses her want to “go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia” (p.1674), but John told her she “wasn’t able to go” (p.1675). This type of control causes the narrator to lose her sense of self. She constantly has her husband has given her a “planned prescription for each hour in the day.”(p.1671), and all she wants is to do is live her life and have some freedom to write when she pleases. The narrator feels like writing would be beneficial to her mental state, and that it would help her express her feelings and become well, but having to hide the fact that she is writing exhausts her.
Finally, the nursery that the narrator and John are staying in is awful.

From the barred up windows, to the “smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (p.1671) wallpaper. The bars on the windows make the narrator feel as if she is trapped and cannot escape the awful torture of the wallpaper. Aside from the bars on the windows, the wallpaper is the main aspect that feeds into the narrator’s nervous depression, and causes her to experience a complete mental breakdown. The troubles all started when the narrator started following the pattern and noticing every twist and turn in the design. It then progressed to her seeing a woman behind bars in the pattern. Next, it became lifelike to her, “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.” (p.1675). Finally, when the narrator reaches the utmost of her mental breakdown she begins tearing off the wallpaper in hopes of freeing the woman trapped inside, only to discover she is the woman behind the pattern. “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard.” (p.1680) I believe by this point the narrator feels that her husband has controlled her so much, that it is like being trapped in a pattern, with no way

out.
When all aspects of this story come together, it is no wonder the narrator had a mental breakdown. In the 1890’s when this story was written, the man in the relationship had all the power. Women were seen as housewives, and that was it. The narrator in this story had a great mind before her nervous depression, and was discouraged from working so much that she completely lost control. In this time period the suppression of women was a major factor in everyday life.