Escape By Madness
Escape by Madness
?The Yellow Wallpaper,? by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story of a husband?s attempt to cure his wife of her ?temporary nervous depression?, by isolating her from her newborn, three miles from town, in a large mansion where she is to spend the majority of her time in a room alone, resting. Gilman shows the process of her mental demise as repression and supervision force her to withdraw inward and bottle her feelings. In the story, ?The Yellow Wallpaper,? Gilman illustrates the internal conflict the woman experiences by showing her struggles with her role and place in society.
The nursemaid and the narrator?s sister- in -law keep their distance because they take for granted that her husband, a physician, knows what is best for her. John, her husband, decides that the ?rest cure? is a necessary measure for a recovery from her nervous or postpartum depression. As Heather Kirk Thomas points out, the story ?addresses Dr. S. Weir Michael?s famous rest cure and his treatment of . . . deliberating postpartum depression? (624).
I take phosphates or phosphites-which ever it is-and tonics, and air and exercise, and journeys, and am absolutely forbidden to ?work? until I
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