The Baby Yellows
“The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an unnerving tale about a woman and her spiral into psychosis. Mirroring the author’s actual experiences with depression and the “resting cure”, the story criticizes medical care that ignores patient concerns and deprives them of emotional outlets that could have been beneficiary towards a healthy mind. Set in the late nineteenth century, “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrates the psychological effects of the popular “resting cure” and how the narrator is influcenced by it. While the illness the narrator has is never actually said, it is very heavily implied that she is suffering from postpartum depression. Eventually, her husband’s reliance on the “resting cure” and denying her healthy mental activities is what causes her depression to grow into postpartum psychosis. Postpartum depression is a form of depression typically affecting women after childbirth. Symptoms of postpartum depression include hallucinations and delusions, extreme agitation or anxiety, overwhelming fatigue, bizarre behavior, mood swings, inability or refusal to eat or sleep, and over worrying about the infant. The narrator showcases all of these symptoms, leading to the heavy assumption that she is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator regularly experiences hallucinations, seeing a woman trapped behind bars in the pattern of the wallpaper. Gilman writes, “The front pattern does move- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (Gilman 306) exemplifying the narrator’s growing obsession. Along with her visual hallucinations, the narrator experiences olfactory hallucinations. She describes the smell of the wallpaper and says she finds it “hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.” (305), fully believing that the scent was following her every where. Furthermore, the narrator repeats throughout the story about how tired she is: “Of course I didn’t do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now. But it tired me all the same.” (300). Simultaneously, the narrator is constantly making references to how she doesn’t sleep at night because of her fixation on the yellow wallpaper. She also experiences mood swings, saying that “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.” (301). Her erratic demeanor hint that the narrator is experiencing intense anxiety and depression. Perhaps her lack of sleep and her hallucinations result in delusions. The narrator describes how she has caught her husband looking at the wallpaper and how she “caught Jennie with her hand on it once” (304). These delusions only validate the narrator’s fixation on the bizarre paper, leading her to sink deeper into self-destruction. Because of her strange behavior, it is clear that the narrator is kept away from her child because she does not want to be near him. 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.” (299), and then states that she’s grateful John keeps her in the room with the yellow wallpaper because the baby would not be able to handle it. This indicates that she worries about her child, but her anxiety is holding her back from taking care of him. Accordingly, the narrator’s feelings and actions mirror the symptoms of postpartum depression. The narrator’s untreated postpartum depression eventually spirals into a sort of psychosis by the end of the story. It can be speculated that the narrator’s depression grew into postpartum psychosis. Towards the end of the story, the narrator’s delusions and hallucinations get more and more intense. In her psychotic state, her delusions become her reality and she truly believes that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper. On her last day, alone with the wallpaper, the narrator says “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her” (307). and then proceeds to start tearing the wallpaper down, symbolizing her own mental breakdown. However, the narrator tore at the wallpaper with the aim of helping the woman, but her intentions quickly flip when she mentions a rope and how “if that woman does get out and tries to get away, I can tie her!” (307). Her contradictory feelings towards the woman as well as her unusual behavior afterwards, further suggest that the narrator developed postpartum psychosis. The “resting cure” prescribed to the narrator is an explanation for why she breaks down. Her husband John, a doctor, is very confident that he knows what’s best for his wife. Following the “resting cure”, John prevents his wife from expressing herself, forbidding her from writing and forcing her to retreat into her mind, where she created a secret diary in order to hide her true feelings. The narrator, clearly a very imaginative and creative person, is the opposite of her clinical husband, making it hard for him to fully understand her. Thus, he is ignorant to what his wife actually needs because he consistently disregards her opinions, hindering her recovery. Even the smallest of requests get denied, John was “meant to repaper the room, but afterward he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (299) demonstrating how he dominates his wife in the guise of helping her. Moreover, John continually patronizes his wife, calling her names such as“blessed little goose” (299) and “little girl” (303), hence forcing the narrator into a childish state where she’s unable to defend herself without appearing irrational or disloyal. Although painted as the villain in this short story, John did not intend to make his wife worse. The way he treated his wife’s depression helped destroy her. After he finds his delirious wife creeping and faints, she does not recognize him, referring to him as “that man” and saying she has to creep over him because he fainted on her path. Their unequal marriage not only resulted in the narrator’s dissociation with reality, but it also lead to John’s downfall. The narrator’s failure to recognize her husband symbolizes that John is destroyed by the same relationship he imprisoned his wife in. Postpartum psychosis, although temporary, is also very treatable with proper care. Unfortunately, in the late 1890s, the prefered treatment of depression was the “resting cure”. This “cure” suppressed the narrator’s imagination, completely forbidding her from expressing her negative emotions and ultimately leading her to her demise. As the narrator got worse mentally, her husband believed she was getting better and encouraged the resting cure. Her continuation of the resting cure progressively turned her postpartum depression into postpartum psychosis. As she grew more obsessed with the yellow wallpaper, she slipped deeper into her fantasy world and eventually lost her mind.

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Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Art of the Short Story. By Dana Gioia and R.
S. Gwynn. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. N. pag. Print.

"Postpartum Depression." Definition. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.
"Postpartum Psychosis." Postpartum Psychosis. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.