Yellow Wallpaper

4 Pages 1083 Words

Take control
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story based on “rest cure” treatment, developed after the Civil War by famous physician S. W. Mitchell, which required confining the patient to a remote residence on complete bad rest, increased food intake, supplements and exercise, massage and, at times, electric shock therapy. But the story actually is not a discussion about treatment methods of common mental disorders but about a struggle of personality- about a woman that tying to find independent way of living. The narrator, a young women in her thirties, faces deep identity problems, that lead her to extraordinary ways to express herself. To understand what is really going on with the person, we have to take a look at the environment that surrounds her. The fact that she is not at home but in temporary “ancestral hall for summer” and moved there just a few weeks ago, to the idea that this is not about her physical environment, but her emotional state we are talking here and the problem has not appeared itself just a few weeks ago; rather physical environment only triggered it making it noticeable. As opposite to temporal, that can be changed, her emotional surrounding is constant and this is what we will try to focus on. We believe, that “nervous breakdown” was result of continuous struggle to find her own personality and be accepted as she is, not the way it convenient for others to see her.
The first figure that mention here is her husband John, who is her physician as well, and the reason she does not get batter, from her words. There are many reasons for psychological problems to occur, and one of them is extreme loneliness of narrator and lack of support from others. In this family husband presents a narcissistic, self-loving figure, that confident in self-perfection. He does not take his wife seriously as a partner and friend, keeping her away from his business. He leaving in a morning and come back late, only tell...