Suhaila Islam
Professor Von Uhl/Yankwitt
FIQWS HA9 (12:30 pm)
21/9/2021
The Struggles That Come With An Invisible Illness
Have you ever experienced anxiety, hopelessness, or distress at any point in your life? Millions of individuals around the world struggle silently because of the stigma behind mental health. They are reluctant to seek help seeing as hundreds of people are labeled as weak, attention-seeking, and overdramatic for doing so. Why is this the case? Are we not supposed to treat everyone with kindness regardless of their struggles? Well, the problem between our society and mental health dates back to 1880. It’s clear through Sigmund Freud’s Lecture one, and The Yellow Wallpaper that doctors during his time have been treating patients who are diagnosed with illnesses that appear to be hysteria as though they are less urgent compared to an individual diagnosed with a physical disease.
Doctors during that time viewed hysteric patients as individuals who embellish their illnesses. Physicians had such an unreasonable and harsh perspective on hysteria because they weren’t able to comprehend the situation nor the science. This is evident seeing as Freud mentions “ He cannot understand hysteria, and in the face of it he is himself a layman.”(Freud 7) Both doctors and regular individuals would treat illnesses such as hysteria as theoretical. They would not take it seriously or give the correct treatment and medical advice to help the individual get better.
Throughout the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the main character expresses her struggles with her nervous depression. Her husband feels as though he knows what’s best because he’s the physician. Her mental state deteriorates as the story goes on because she is not getting the help she needs; instead, she is faced with the inclination of her hallucinations, and a husband who she feels won’t believe her. This is distinctly showcased because she says “John is practical in the extreme, John is a physician, perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?”(Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper 1) John does not give his wife the opportunity to express how she feels but rather gaslights her for the entirety of the short story.
This story was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman as expressed in “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” for the sole purpose of “saving people from being driven crazy”( Gilman, “Why I wrote”1). She suffered from a mental illness, and when she went to get the help she desperately needed she was instead given medical advice that did more harm than good in her case. They told her to change her lifestyle completely. To go from an intellectually driven woman to someone who stays in bed all day. Maybe that’s because they viewed her as incapable and ill because of her gender. Her cries and struggles were heard but ignored, so she stood up for herself in order to stand up for all the other women struggling as well. Doctors did not listen, and society labeled them hysterical because they are women who suffer from illnesses that are psychological.
Through research, soon it became apparent to physicians such as the narrator’s husband in The Yellow Wallpaper that although they do not understand it these women are experiencing hysteria or an illness that resembles it. The Yellow Wallpaper accurately portrays Freud’s criticism of most doctors because the woman within the story represents women globally. Her story is told because so many other individuals go through life feeling as though they are weak because of what men and doctors say to them when in reality, they are sick and in need of dire medical treatment. It is clear to readers when the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper mentions that her husband John “says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fantasies run away with me.”(Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper 6) John truly believes that his wife is the main cause of her illness and that her intrusive thoughts and struggles come down to merely her imagination. Doctors such as her husband who are close-minded and misogynistic are the reason millions of women go through hardships in silence.
Works Cited Page
Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis. The Standard, W. W. Norton & Company, 1910.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. The Standard, The New England Magazine, 1892.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. The Standard, The Forerunner, 1913
