Mood Disorders in The Yellow Wallpaper Essays

Mood Disorders in The Yellow Wallpaper Essays Mood Disorders in The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Mood Disorders in The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Essay Topic: The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper is about a husband trying to help his wife deal with her emotional disorder† as best as he can. The novel allows the reader to witness woman being driven to madness by a Victorian rest cure, a once frequently prescribed period of inactivity thought to cure female hysteria, depression, nervousness and anxiety. In the period of which this specific piece of literature was written, women had minimal rights, even concerning their mental status and rights. There were instances where not having a menstrual cycle was considered abnormal and a symptom of insanity. Symptoms such as depression after the death of a loved one, use of foul language were also reasons a woman would be admitted. Haney-Peritz, Janice. â€Å"Monumental Feminism and Literature’s Ancestral House: Another Look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.† Short Story Criticism 62. (2003): 95-107. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. (hysteria) As she remains in the room, she begins to slip into depressive psychosis. She begins to see a woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper. The story concludes with the woman circling the room, now completely immersed in her mental illness, removing the wallpaper and stepping over her unconscious husband who had fainted at the realization of his wifes mental state. The feminism literary views show how the piece suggests patriarchal ideology and how it proves itself in 19th-century marriage and medical practice. The wallpaper itself is a metaphor whereas the nameless wife is herself trapped just like the woman she sees in the wallpaper. She could be seeing herself in the wallpaper and tries to free herself by ripping the wallpaper off the walls. She is trapped behind her husband, with no rights and no say she is essentially a Guinea pig for him. The woman inside the wallpaper represents the pervasive and inescapable injustice, much like the rules the wife hides behind. The wife in the story is the embodiment of struggle