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Essays about importance of mental health
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There are many obstacles and struggles in life that one encounters. In order to fight and survive against anything thrown your way, you can exercise certain parts of your body to become stronger. For example, if you are physically weak, you can work out with some weights in the gym to build muscle. You can diet your food to be able to become healthier, but how can you build your mind stronger. It may be the muscle we least work on to help it battle any illness. There are many cases of mental illnesses around the world. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is battling postpartum depression, while her husband who is a physician, believes that all she needs to get well is rest. Both the narrator and her …show more content…
Her husband John is a physician who is extremely scientific and his sister Mary, is a nurse for the narrator who takes care of her while the John is away. Mary also takes care of the narrator’s baby, due to her condition. The narrator struggle at the beginning with what appears to be anxiety, as she describes being away from her son makes her nervous. She also describes that her beautiful home can also be haunted, which can be the reasoning behind the low price they purchased it for. But of course, John did not accept her nervousness as a bad sign of her health, nor did he believe in the supernatural since it cannot be scientifically proven at the …show more content…
As her obsession grew, she began to write. She believed that it helped her cope with her situation by calming down her nerves, but John was correct though; her writing was only further developing her illness. Since her mind was exploring her thoughts more, she was unable to distract her mind from the obsession of the wallpaper. Now what the narrator “weights” she carried were at its peak. Her obsession was at its highest and she began to lose sight of reality. She did not have physical pain but her mental pain was tremendous. Her illness reached a point that was
Should one trust the accounts of the main characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Yellow Wallpaper?” “The Cask of Amontillado” is written by Edgar Allan Poe. In the “Cask of Amontillado,” a man named Montresor tells of a time when he uses deception to murder a man that he perceives has done wrong against him. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is in the format of journal entries that are written by a woman whose mental health is deteriorating. The deterioration of her mental health leads her to suffer from hallucinatory thinking. How reliable are the narrators? Reliability encompases the honesty the narators exhibit twoards the readers,
In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator of the story is a woman who is struggling with her mental health. Throughout the story, she progressively gets worse in her condition, due to the lack of mental health awareness, and her treatment plan. To start off, she is given the “rest” method of treatment.This is a treatment that focuses on letting the brain rest due to the thought that mental health issues were just a matter of an overactive or overstimulated mind. The narrator’s husband is the reason why her condition continued to get slowly worse, his main concerns were making her normal again, even if he hurt her in the process. Although this story can be interpreted many ways, through symbolism and
To start off, first, the narrator thinks that the house her and her husband John are renting for the next three months is haunted or it wouldn’t be as cheap as it is for being such a beautiful place. Another thing is that she unhappy in her marriage. Her husband doesn’t listen to her, tells her she’s wrong and laughs at her. She is feeling very unwell and all he says is she has temporary nervous depression and only tells her to stay in bed and do nothing. The way she describes things is very bleak, dark, depressing. She keeps going back to thoughts of the house being haunted and gets anxious. She becomes angry with John for no reason sometimes and thinks it’s from her ‘nervous condition’. Something the reader may not catch onto when she talks about how she doesn’t like her bedroom is how she took the nursery, so right away, we know she has a baby. She feels trapped with the barred windows and not being able to go anywhere, having to just lay down and look at the most revolting yellow wallpaper shes ever seen. Writing the story alone makes her extremely exhausted and she says that John doesn’t know the extent of her suffering. Eventually, it’s made known that she can’t even go near her own child and it makes her increasingly nervous. She has unwanted thoughts throughout the entire story of the terrifying ugly yellow
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be perceived in a few different ways. Greg Johnson wrote an article describing his own perception of what he believed the short story meant. In doing so, it can be noticed that his writing aligns well with what can be perceived from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story. The narrator Jane, experiences many things throughout Gilman’s story, which Johnson describes thoroughly. It is because of these descriptive points that allow Johnsons article to be a convincing argument. The main ideas that Johnson depicts that are supported and I agree with from the story include Janes developing imaginative insight, her husband and sister-in-law’s belief on domestic control, and her gained power through unconsciousness.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of the Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are viewed from a woman’s perspective in the nineteenth century. They show the issues on how they are confined to the house. That they are to be stay at home wives and let the husband earn the household income. These stories are both written by American women and how their marriage was brought about. Their husbands were very controlling and treated them more like children instead of their wives. In the nineteenth century their behavior was considered normal at the time. In “The Story of the Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” both women explore their issues on wanting to be free from the control of their husband’s.
The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage. Possibly the lady isn’t writing a
The character of the husband, John, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is introduced as a respected physician and a caring husband who strives to improve the mental health of his wife, the narrator, who is diagnosed with temporary nervous condition. John tries throughout the story to apply professional treatment methods and medications in his approach to helping his wife gain strength. However, his patient, his wife, seems to disregard John’s professional opinions and act as if she is following his advices only during his awakening presence with her. The narrator seems to be in need of John’s positive opinion about the status of her mental condition in order to avoid the criticism even though she disagrees with his treatment methodology. John, without doubt, cares for his wife and her wellbeing, but he does not realize how his treatment method negatively impacts their relationship his wife’s progress towards gaining strength. Although John was portrayed as a caring and a loving physician and husband to the narrator through out most of the story, he was also suggested as being intrusive and directive to a provoking level in the mind of the narrator.
In 1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a short story known as, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The story is based on how society treated and viewed females during the late 19th century. It involves an unknown female narrator that is believed to be suffering from temporary nervous depression. The story is conveyed through a biased first person point of view because it presented through the narrators personal diary. In order to treat and cure her from this acute form of depression the narrators physician husband John prescribes her the, “rest-cure”. (Gilman) The, “rest cure” (Gilman) required the narrator, “to forgo intellectual and social stimulation and to eat and sleep indulgently”. (Scott) This meant that the narrator could not do what she loves most and that was writing. However, that did not stop the narrator because the story is conveyed through a biased first person point of view presented through the narrator’s personal diary. The unnamed narrator did not agree with this method and thought, “that congenial work, with excitement and change” (Gilman), would be a more effective cure. However, the prescribed treatment failed and the narrator experiences a dramatic change in her mental stability and begins to lose touch with reality. The reason she begins to lose touch with the real word is because every second the narrator is in that room she becomes more, “adapted to her surrounding’s”. (Scott) It’s essential to understand that as the narrator continuously loses touch with the real world she is developing a better understanding about the inner reality of her life. Through developing an increased awareness of the inner reality of her life the narrator experiences a split in her personality. The split in her personality is crucial ...
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Charlotte Gilman was a renowned feminist author who published most of her work in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Her works, of which "The Yellow Wallpaper" is most famous, reflect her feminist views. Gilman used her writings as a way of expressing these views to the public. At the time "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written, the attitude in colonial America towards feminists was not one of tolerance or acceptance. In the mid-1880s, Gilman suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually was referred to a specialist in neurological disorders. The doctor's diagnosis was such: Gilman was perfectly healthy. The doctor ordered Gilman to domesticate her life and to immediately stop her writings. Gilman went by the doctor's orders, and nearly went mad. Now although "Yellow Wallpaper" is a fictional story, it becomes clear that the story was significantly influenced by Gilman's life experiences. Gilman seems to be exploring the depths of mental illness through her writing.
Her tense mind is then further pushed towards insanity by her husband, John. As one of the few characters in the story, John plays a pivotal role in the regression of the narrator’s mind. Again, the narrator uses the wallpaper to convey her emotions. Just as the shapes in the wallpaper become clearer to the narrator, in her mind, she is having the epiphany that John is in control of her.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which takes place at the end of the 19th century, an unnamed narrator’s mental state deteriorates from both a severe postpartum depression and the ‘rest cure’ prescribed to her by her husband, a doctor who believes she needs three months of absolute rest in order to gain her sanity back. In the late 19th century, the ‘rest cure” was a widely used method curated by neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell. It was a method of restricting all movement a woman did and putting her on strict bed rest until she was “cured”. The technique really demonstrated how women during this time period were treated and looked down upon compared to men. In spite the fact that the husbands of these women had their best interest at heart, they were doing more harm than good to their wives. While at the time it sounded like a good idea to take away all stress from a stressed woman and restrict her to little to no activities, it ends up driving the woman mad because she is no longer taken seriously and just looked at as a broken object. In her short story, Gilman uses
At the beginning of the story, it is shown that the patient is “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she] is well again” (Gilman 1). This shows that the protagonist is not only isolated from the outside world while going through the rest cure, but is also isolated from any sort of stimulating activity, causing an obsession with the wallpaper. At first she finds the wallpaper to be horrifying, but eventually she becomes consumed by its patterns. The protagonist “[follows] that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics” (Gilman 2). She uses the wallpaper to try to create excitement for herself where there isn’t any, developing an addiction to it. Eventually, the obsession becomes so strong that she starts to see a woman in the wallpaper, a woman that “seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 5). This shows great progression in her descent to madness at it displays how she is starting to imagine things. This woman in the wallpaper also epitomizes the protagonist’s own situation, showing that the madness caused by her isolation makes her desperately want to get out. To sum it up, the protagonist’s obsession with the yellow wallpaper is caused by isolation due to the fact that she finds the wallpaper to be the only source of excitement. Since the obsession with the wallpaper is a huge representation of the protagonist’s descent to madness, it is
In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her experience. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character is going through depression and she is being oppressed by her husband and she represents the oppression that many women in society face. Gilman illustrates this effect through the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the nursery room, and the barred windows.