Yellow Wallpaper" and Mental Illness in Women

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an important short story that delves into the issue of mental illness. It illustrates how women and their problems are trivialized, with this closely related to the role that women have in society. Through the story, it is seen that women become prisoners of their mental illness because the medical community will not help them. This leaves women to manage their own problems, an action that lead to madness. By telling this story, Gilman is urging the medical community to take a new view on mental illness, to take women seriously, and to find a genuine way to help women before the condition worsens. This makes the short story an extended metaphor for medical discourse on women and mental illness, that shows both the problems that exist and calls for a solution to those problems.

In...
[ View Full Essay]