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Abigail Johnson Mr. Hurley ENG 131
27 September 2013
The psychology behind it
Many things can be said about Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as how this is some form of bildungsroman, or how it is a story of female repression and omission from society. Another, potentially more insightful reading, could come from the psychological field of study and suggest that the narrator suffers from postpartum
psychosis or postpartum depression. The things that the narrator says, hints at, does, and explains all points toward one universal truth: postpartum depression.
People with postpartum depression are less than likely to verbally express themselves, but here we see the narrator writing her thoughts down. The way she expresses herself on paper is interesting because she will talk about how “unreasonably angry,” or “positively angry” she will get, for no apparent reason (473, 475). Anyone with postpartum depression will have extreme mood swings, similar to that of bipolar disorder. The narrator also continues to explain how regularly she cries for no significant reason. Having no reason to cry or to be angry, yet exhibiting those behaviors in extreme fashions only exacerbates the point that she is clinically depressed.
The narrator also talks of how she has little to no appetite, is shameful to admit her emotions to her husband, lacks emotional attachment, and the list goes on. She verbalizes, through her journaling, how upset she is, yet how little she feels. Being on the border of extreme emotions with no connection to anyone or anything is exactly what it
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means to be clinically depressed. Her husband takes care of her all day and she feels, “basely ungrateful not to value it more” (474). This lack of emotion paired with mood swings is confusing to her and pushes her to dwell and fixate on anything she can make sense of. This is completely normal for depressive patients.
Now, the one thing she hints at throughout the short story is her overwhelming feelings of shame. When it comes to crying, she attempts to hide it around her husband and whoever else might be around at any given time. She is alone a lot, which allows her to release her emotions freely.
Also, when it comes to the wallpaper, she has some sense that her fixation isn’t seen as normal because she says that she will not “mention it anymore” to her husband or otherwise (478). Her fixation on the wallpaper turns into hallucinations, delusions, and absolute paranoia, but she is careful to maintain this to herself for some sense of guilt or shame about the subject.
Of course, people with postpartum depression do exhibit other symptoms aside from mood swings, lack of emotion, and shame. The actions of depressive patients tend to be all over the board, from staying up all night to watching one particular location until a delusion or hallucination forms. The narrator is so extremely fatigued by the simplest of tasks, like dressing one’s self, and then proceeds to be unable to sleep at night for her fixations involving the walls. Her baby gives her anxiety to be around, or to even think about being with him. She stares at the walls until she sees “a recurrent spot” or “a woman…creeping about behind that pattern,” and then continues staring at the wallpaper for hours on end (475, 478). That is called a fixation; fixations lead to anxiety,
hallucinations, and paranoia. She demonstrates all of these symptoms.
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For every symptom, she explains it ten times over. Not only is she fixating on the wall, but on her symptoms as well. In her own writings, she mentions being tired or fatigued at least four times. She explains her different mood swings at least six times, and her feelings of shame at least five times. Her lack of joy is mentioned five times and her paranoia is revealed countless times.
By page 481, the narrator is having detailed hallucinations of a woman living in the wallpaper. The explanations of this woman continue until it becomes the narrator. She has a loss of personality, confusing herself with her imagined fixation. This explanation of losing herself, in her writing, further pushes the idea that the level of her depressive episode has reached the extreme of personality confusion along with extreme
disorientation within her surroundings.
By the end, the question could be posed, what if the isolation caused her
depressive episode to escalate to the degree that it did? Potentially the isolation allowed her to dwell on her fixations to a degree that is beyond even postpartum depression. There is no question that each symptom, leading to the next, is of a clinical depressive condition. However, the ending alludes that perhaps her condition reached complete identity loss.
