FREE ESSAY ON THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

The Yellow Wallpaper
Throughout history people have always seemed to follow what notions that were considered
"cool". Though I doubt that "cool" was the word used to describe these notions they were
still there in some form or another. One of the greatest farces ever committed in the
name of these popular perceptions was medicine. At that time, medicine that was on the
cutting edge seem to have always involved some sort of noxious chemical or a typically
atrocious diet. Not to mention the fact that ninety-nine percent of the doctors were men.
Women's notions were immediately discounted on the bases of the preconception that women
were not meant for such enlightened thoughts. No, men really knew what was best and women
were meant to stand by what their husbands' said. This brings one particular husband to
mind and how he was responsible for his wife going completely and utterly insane. His
name is John and he is the husband to a woman who was diagnosed with a temporary nervous
depression, meaning a slight hysterical tendency. Through John's interference he turned
what was considered a minor case of a chemical imbalance into to full blown
schizophrenia. 
During the turn of the century, which is when this story took place, what scientists knew
of the human mind wouldn't fill the inside of a matchbook. This was for certain the case
when it was a woman who was the patient. If there was any deviation in the 
accepted behavior of a woman as deemed by society, the woman was considered hysterical.
When dealing with these patients, instead of seriously considering the consequences of
their actions, they went along with obscenely stupid notions on how to deal with problems
of the mind. The conventional course of action to take in the narrator's case was the one
of nothing. I mean literally, nothing. For the narrator was considered hysterical and
slightly depressed and there was only one course of 
action for such symptoms. That was one of complete rest. In those days the rest cure was
very popular. It involved being set apart from anything that might have even the remotest
possibility of stress in it. The main character of The Yellow Wallpaper was indeed set
apart from all activity as directed by her husband. John dutifully followed the set path,
not questioning any of the accepted methods. He set his wife up in a large, old house for
the summer, kept all company that was thought to be excitable away, and separated her
from her child. All this was done under the idea that these things would lower the
narrators nervousness. He even took away her writing. She quickly finishes one paragraph
with: "There comes John, and I must put this away-- he hates to have me write a word."
The narrator is troubled by this nonaction on her part. A child of the times, she also
follows the currently accepted rule that state she needs rest and that her state is not
that serious. Though she believes "it is only nervousness," she does feel that, "It does
weigh on one so not to do no duty in any way." However, she cannot bring herself to
openly objecting to convention. In face of her solitude she has only one pastime, which
is obsessing over the hideous wallpaper in her room. She describes it quite well when she
says, "The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but
the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under
way in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face,
knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. The outside pattern is a
florid arabesque, reminding one a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints an
interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions-why,
that is something like it." I would imagine that would not be considered an appropriate
way to pass the time. In fact it is probably the worst thing to be giving an unstable
mind a teasingly, unstable object to focus upon. John does not give any thought to this,
but, of course he is the doctor and he thinks he knows best.
But then why doesn't his cure work? The narrator seems to be getting worse, not better.
Someone who had the slightest bit of common sense probably would have thought that this
cure was not right in this case and try a different approach. John, however, thought
otherwise and kept with the rest cure, making her take, "cod liver oil and lots of tonics
and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat." I suppose at the time
nutrition was not thought of as highly important as it is today and therefore people
lacked the lacked the knowledge of how meat should be properly cooked and while one glass
of wine a day may be healthy, ale was certainly not a dietary need. In fact, just a room
change might have been the right change to make in her life. She goes on about her room
with, "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened onto the piazza
and had roses all over the window, and suck pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But
John would not hear of it." It seems that John was being a bit stuborn on the subject,
probably just out of self-centeredness. He is not the one who spent most of their time in
that room. Then again, he might not be doing this to the narrator out of stubbornness. He
might simply not know what his wife's condition is. She tries hard to not show her
suffering when he is there. Which isn't often. John seems to have neglected his wife a
great deal. In the story, he comes across as always being absent on trips to see other
patients. He apparently truly thought that this rest cure was sufficient and that he did
not need to spend time with his wife. But even if he is gone a lot, there is no excuse
for missing the dire symptoms his wife was showing. She may have been trying to hide her
misery, but he, her spouse, should still have been able to spot it. 
Unfortunately, her symptoms went unnoticed and untreated. At least properly, that is,
unless you consider the rest cure to be appropriate. I find John in fault for this. He
was her physician and her husband. Yet he didn't have enough sense to see how his wife
was suffering. Instead of treating his wife as his wife and not another patient, he would
have noticed how wrong the conventional ideas were and done something that would actually
help his wife. Everything he did was based on what other doctors thought. He did not try
to go against what is, and always shall be, the most ludicrous way of treating the
mentally ill. Because of his incompetence, he left his wife in a room with an obsession
that proved to be too much. What was a treatable, mild case of mental disorder became
complete insanity. All this was done at his hands and no amount of washing could ever
cleanse them of his wrongdoing.