Thought help: what caused the narattors mental breakdown in “the yellow wallpaper” - Help.com

If i remember the story right, I think it was being stuck in the room for a long time. Is this the one were she/he saw things moving in the wallpaper and stuff like that? wasn’t she sick? idk, I remember being a teachers aid in an english 3 class in high school and they read it.

i dont know

yea she suffers from depression and her doctor/lover keeps telling her shes not really sick. they go to the “mansion” for a couple of weeks in the summer so she can get alot of rest and relax (a cure at the time). Throughout the story the narattor has a strange feeling of the house, but John(her doctor/lover i believe) disregards her statements of uneasiness. When she arrives to the “nursery” where she will be staying at she immediately notices the disturbing yellow wallpaper. As she observes the room she notices rings on the walls and bars on the windows making the assumption that it was once a gymnasium for children. She also notices that the bed is bolted down to the floor and kind of chewed as if the children were teething. She tells John once again that the wallpaper is bothering her and she would like to have it changed, but John claims that if he changed that it would lead her into a state of paranoia and she will want everything about the house changed (keep in mind they are only there for about a month). John leaves her in that room all day while he is in town. She begins to study the pattern on the wall, and notices that alot of spots look like upside down heads with their neck snapped and eyes staring. She continues her descent into insainty until she sees a woman behind the wallpaper shaking and tearing it trying to escape. She does this throughout the story until she goes totally insane. I would suggest that John is the main cause of her downfall into insanity because: 1) He denies her sickness 2) he disregards her uneasy feelings about the house and room 3) He refuses to change the wallpaper 4) He leaves her locked up in the room alone all day and most of night. Hope that helps but a side note: She sees the rings and bars and bolted down bed assuming it is a gymnasium. If you break the details down, it is more like a insane asylum. Another interesting detail that is overlooked is John leaves for town all day every day. Back than in the 1800’s when a man wanted to leave his wife for another women, he would have her checked into an insane asylum to get her diagnosed insane. A real interesting story to read and i enjoyed it.

The others are right, I guess. More than that though, as I remember, the narrator is being treated for exhaustion or something like that because she has been depressed. They diagnosed many women back then for things like that (depression) because the were women and thus couldn’t handle the stresses of working and such. The way they treated them was to not allow them to write or read and they had to stay inside so as not to exhaust themselves. The narrator is left with nothing to do but stare at the wall because her concerns are not taken seriously by the men because they believe she is a feeble minded woman. Also, as I recall narrator’s name is never mentioned…I believe this is because the story is supposed to be universal to many women’s experience from that time period. Great story.

i did.

I found the story to be quite annoying. As a man of science I totally relate to the husband. He moves, gives his wife the very best treatment 19th century has to offer and the story just bombs on him. At least thats what the professors tell you. Everyone is left feeling like the husband was this horrible guy. The way I see it he was very loving and only wanted his wife to be mentally stable. A hundred years from know they will be saying “you mean the doctors just cut the cancer out with a stick? How barbaric.” Most men would just divorce a crazy wife or beat her to death back then. He truly loved her.