Tricks A Mind Can Play- The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Tricks a Mind Can Play

Is our perception of life always real? Do we see things as we want them or imagine things to be what they are not? Can certain life experiences, like being a new mother, lead one to be delusional, depressed, and psychotic? One woman's story is brought forth in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The woman, who is left unnamed, tells the reader that she is spending three months at a colonial estate to help her recover from what she says is "temporary nervous depression". She has just had a baby who is now left in someone else's care. Her husband John, who is her doctor as well, has deemed she do this. She takes medications all day. Her perception of the house throughout the story doesn't add up. She also has a neurosis with the wallpaper in the room she is staying. She is constantly seeing images in it. Moreover, she is convinced the house is haunted. By looking at her relationship with her so called husband and doctor, her perception of her surroundings, and how she sees the wallpaper, it is obvious she is schizophrenic and is not where she thinks she is.

Her doctor, John, doesn't consistently fill the role of a husband. He is only doing things a doctor would do for his patient. Therefore, is she just seeing him as her husband? For instance, John only sees her once and while, like a doctor visiting his patients. She says "John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious" and "I am alone a good deal just now". John also is prescribing her medications. He has forbidden her to work. She also tells us that "he hates to have me write a word". He keeps her in isolation because she says "he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now". A lady named Jennie, who she says is John's sister, is also taking care of her. It seems though that Jennie could very well be her nurse instead because she says "And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me". Though there still is other evidence he very well could have been her husband, there is even more proof in her perceptions of the house and the wallpaper that she is schizo.

The house she is staying in seems very strange by her descriptions. It sounds more like a mental hospital. First of all, she is made to stay there for three full months. That is a typical stay for some in an institution. She says it feels like a haunted house, which anyone would say about those dreaded institutions. Some other hints which prove this is not just a house are the facts that it is a good deal away from where people live, three miles to be exact. She tells us "there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people" and "box-bordered paths". Could not these be locking doors, halls, as well as all the separate rooms for other patients? There is also a gate at the top of the stairs which makes no sense to have in a normal colonial estate. The room that she is staying in has bars on the windows. Why would there be bars on an upper floor window in any normal house? These bars were there so mental patients couldn't escape or jump to their death. There are rings on the walls. No normal house bedroom would have these. These sound like something used to confine a patient. The wallpaper is a nasty yellow color, smells, and is ripped off only in the places that can be reached when in her bed. This is because patients are chained to the bed and cannot rip it off any further. She says "the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed..looks as if it had been through wars".