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The Power Of The Female Mind

The Power of the Female Mind
This paper examines Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story "The Yellow Wall-paper," by focusing in particular on the history of the narrator’s mental instability, and on her current condition as that of post-partum depression syndrome. How, defeated by her inability to communicate with her husband, the protagonist immerses herself into analyzing the wall-paper, and, as her madness progresses, the narrator develops an unfounded fear of her husband and sister-in-law, and becomes aware of a woman present in the pattern of the wallpaper. Furthermore, it analyzes how, later in her psychosis, the protagonist imagines many women caught in the pattern. It discusses how the women caught in the wall-paper seem to be comparable to the narrator’s imprisonment by her husband. Additionally, the analysis shows that, while the narrator’s sensitivity of the wall-paper exposes her escalating madness, this perception symbolizes the struggle from which women during that time period attempted to break free, as they were forced to abide to social rules and norms arbitrarily imposed upon them by a male dominated society.
From an early age, the protagonist of “The Yellow Wall-paper” seems to have shown signs of mental instability. An indication of this was her singular imagination as a child, which was unusual compared to other children of her age. Even though it is not clear, this early onset of imaginative episodes might have facilitated to her rapid descent into insanity during adulthood: “I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank wall and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store” (811). As an adult, the narrator first appears as a typical person when she vividly describes the house where she has been taken for a treatment of rest and relaxation. However, her current state of mind becomes clear, as she believes that there is something bizarre about the house, even though there is not apparent...