The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins: Sickness or Health - Book Report/Review Example

28 May The Yellow Wallpaper: Sickness or Health A literature text is a peculiar thing as it may be understood and interpreted by different readers in so many ways as many the readers are, and the facts and events described in the text may similarly be obvious which can formulate a single and universally accepted perception of a certain text. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, written in 1892, is an example of text which raises doubt whether the described is of a single meaning, and the main character of the novel, precisely her being ill, is the point of the greatest concern. It is necessary to briefly summarize the mentioned point of concern in order to clarify whether there is any reason to state that the woman is healthy at all. When the woman gave birth to the child, she showed features of puerperal psychosis. Her husband was a doctor who knew how to treat such condition and, due to this and because of his concern for her life, physical and mental health, took intensive care of her and took her away to the place where she could enjoy being in the open air. The family stayed in a mansion house which the woman found strange and “…that there is something queer about it.” (Gilman, 1892). The room where the woman was settled showed traces of living of another person who lived here, as per the woman’s suggestion, unwittingly. The husband orders his wife to have a good rest, but she violated this order by writing a diary which, as per her own feelings, relieved her of the depressing surrounding and interior of her premise. The thing that disturbed her the most was the yellow wallpaper in the ornaments of which she saw many living things and people. The light of the moon in the night, “…something else about that paper - the smell!”, and the yellow marks left on the clothes made the wallpaper more significant and intriguing, and the woman finally found an image of another woman incarcerated in it who, she believed, she had to help with escaping. She did this by means of stripping the wallpaper off the walls of her room. The last day the woman locked in her room to get rid of the remains of the wallpaper which, she suggested, prevents the incarcerated woman from successful escape. She threw the key through the window so that no one could interfere with her occupation, which was why her husband had to search for the key first before he entered her room. The woman supposed that the deliberated character was crawling over the yard through the nights and she started doing the same in her room, and when the husband saw that he fell faint while she went on crawling stepping over him. (Gilman, 1892). The way I see it, the woman is described not very real in the text from the point of view of her being sick. The first evidence of this fact is her behavior: the sick usually deny their illnesses and argue that they are healthy, which is the first reason of medical intervention. The woman, on the contrary, recognizes that her condition is not similar to the sound one and needs something to be done about it, though she does not know herself what, and she refers to it as “a slight hysterical tendency”. (Gilman, 1892). “John is a physician, and… perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.”, the woman says, which makes it possible to conclude that the husband from his professional perspective does everything so that his wife were healthy and felt herself good. “If a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression… what is one to do?” (Gilman, 1892). The position of the brother of the woman who is also a physician is the same: “My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.”, which proves, at least from medical perspective, that the woman is supposedly healthy. (Gilman, 1892). In this regard, the woman’s position contradicts to the allegations of the mentioned physicians and she believes that her condition may be done better by means of taking up work for her excitement which is writing rather than taking medicines and doing physical exercises. (Gilman, 1892). Another fact that gives opportunity to argue the fact of the woman’s illness is excessive care of her husband who sheltered her in a room which, and he could have predicted it and reacted to it properly, might and did instigate her imagination and made her feel uncomfortable. Measures of such a kind shall be taken if the patient is a potential threat to health and, possibly, lives of the people around him, but this is applied as a consequence of his or her aggressive behavior which, obviously, was not the model of behavior of the main character of the novel. The thought “…I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” is, definitely, far from a suggestion of a person who must be sheltered in a separate room in order to hurt anyone. (Gilman, 1892). From my personal perspective, the final of the novel provides information for further consideration, and I see the development of the life of this family the following way. After realizing what happened, the husband insisted on medical intervention, possibly even forced, and the woman had to be subjected to a treatment course which included severe observation and strict fulfillment of the schedule of the hospital. The husband regularly visited the wife and provided her with intensive support and convinced her of necessity of such measures to be taken. As the level of medicine development those days was only on the threshold of an unbelievable leap, the duration of the woman’s stay in hospital were supposedly long and took much powers of her which adversely affected the treatment process in terms of permanent surrounding by the doctors and the similar patients. The intensity and the pace of medicines action was also relatively slow, which, obviously, did not bring much relief to her mental condition. Another possible solution is paying more attention to the woman because she felt this negative situation: “…if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus…” (Gilman, 1892). Woman’s staying alone in the room was also a factor that instigated development of the deviation which her husband could witness when he entered the premise, and he should share the living space with her the way a man and a woman usually did. The husband also should not have prevented the woman’s relatives coming to visit her because such experience could add new emotions to her life which would positively affect her mental health. I believe also that there is a possibility to look at the plot of the novel from the “what if” lens, that is, the situation which happened in the final of the novel could be avoided. The husband might have examined the interior of the room carefully and could notice that the wallpaper made a point of concern due to the ornaments which could give power to the imagination of a person with damages of mental health. He could also insist on her going to hospital for the purpose of treatment and convince her of necessity of this step for her firstly. Conclusion Literary texts provide opportunity to interpret them according to the reader’s individual feelings and experience about them. The novel “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins is one of such texts, and its main character is the one provoking consideration whether her description is possible to be referred to as definitely ill. This character is the most important in the novel, and description of her mental condition makes up about half a text which, obviously, provides both confirmation and negations of her being ill. It is impossible to perceive the woman as ill because her behavior in relation to the others is not a result of her mental disease, however, the event that took place in the final part of the text states that there is something wrong with her mental condition, that is, she is relatively healthy and not that ill as the other characters position her. Works Cited Gilman, C. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1892. Web. 28 May 2015. Read More