I’ve just read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman three times in a row. It’s astounded me. Each time I peel off more layers, like the wallpaper itself, to reveal it’s messages. What a thought-provoking piece of writing.

As someone that experiences anxiety and bouts of depression, I found this account very gaslighting. We are looking at a woman in the 19th century living through a time of high anxiety, exhaustion, known then as hysteria. She has recently given birth so maybe some postnatal depression too. She knows she is unwell and even knows the things she needs to do to improve her mental wellbeing, however the males around her know better. Those males being her physician husband and brother.

“John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage.”

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?”

To cure our narrator of her “hysteria” she is moved into a large house that she deems creepy and is largely confined to a bedroom with barred windows, a bed bolted to the floor and hideous torn wallpaper that will soon begin to haunt her every thought. She asks to spend time with people that might stimulate her mind, she recognises that with nothing to do, all she will do is think about her mental struggles and they will grow. She is not listened to, only mocked and treated like a child. Her husband tends to call her “little goose” and how this annoyed me!

“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she will be as sick as she pleases!”

Our narrator tells us that she has an amazing imagination and that she loves to write, but even that has been taken away from her. As a child she could find patterns and personalities in inanimate objects. In this room she manages to find one thing in her solitude to stimulate her mind, the wallpaper. She is able to detract suicide and broken necks in the paper as she descends further into madness. When everything has been taken away from her, she has found one thing they “the men” can’t take away.

“I have watched John when he did not know I was looking and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once”.

“But I know she was studying the pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself”.

As our narrator descends further and further into madness, she is desperate to find out the hidden message from the wallpaper, what does it mean? She begins to see a woman creeping in the wallpaper, trying to get out. Is this symbolic of our narrator’s entrapment?

After reading this I needed to know more. Who was Charlotte Perkins Gilman and why did she write this? This is a semi-autobiographical account. The Yellow Wallpaper was for Dr Weir Mitchell, the man behind the creation of “the rest therapy” that Charlotte herself was prescribed. That almost sent her into irretrievable madness. Men displaying the same symptoms were prescribed fresh air, companionship, hobbies. All the things our narrator was asking for. Charlotte’s account led to others speaking out about how harmful the rest therapy was and thankfully it fizzled out early 20th century.

I will think about this short story for a long time to come. As someone very experienced with mental health conditions whether that be myself or the people in my life, I felt many emotions reading this. Anger, understanding, sadness and the feeling of being gaslit, infantilised and mansplained to. It’s a must read to gain perspective on how far we have come in terms of mental health and treatment and in particular women’s mental health. Charlotte’s brave and bare writing contributed to this, and we should truly be thankful.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A terrifying, but ultimately sad, thought-provoking glimpse into a society that didn’t understand mental health or women.