In one sense, then, the story is a propaganda piece criticizing a specific way of ‘curing’ mental illness. In the style of a Gothic horror story, the tale follows the gradual deterioration of its narrator’s mental state, but it also explores the ways that her husband John’s attempted treatment aggravates this decline. Reading the series of diary entries that make up the story, the reader is in a privileged position to witness the narrator’s evolving and accelerating descent into madness, foreshadowed by her mounting paranoia and obsession with the mysterious figure behind the pattern of the yellow wallpaper.Īs the portrayal of a woman’s gradual mental breakdown, The Yellow Wallpaper offers the reader a window into the perception and treatment of mental illness in the late nineteenth century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |