Question

Describe the abnormal Psychology seen in The Yellow Wallpaper and provide alternative disgnosis

Answer 1

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about the protagonist who has real emotions and genuine psychology. The story can be tested and analyzed in the context of modern psychology. An alternative diagnosis for the protagonist's condition could be schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is the descriptive term for a group of psychotic disorders in which social, personal and occupational functioning deteriorates. The protagonist showed several symptoms of the disorder:

First of all the protagonist shows signs of paranoia and mistrust on other members of the house. She expresses how glad she is that her baby does not have to be in the room with yellow wallpaper. She also expressed that she was growing afraid of her husband who "seems queer". About Jennie she says that she has an "inexplicable look". When she once catches Jennie looking at the patterns of the wallpaper she is worried that someone besides her would crack the code of the pattern. The pattern talked about here becomes the protagonist's obsession. She starts to hallucinate that the wallpaperr has a pattern of bulging eyes and broken necks along with faint images of a skulking figure stuck behind the pattern. During night time when moon shines on the wallpaper she distinctly notices a figure of a woman trapped behind bars. The protagonist even tries to convince her husband to leave the house for a visit with relatives, but he refuses. One could even say that delusions of persecution were present as she did not trust her husband to tell what she was able to look in the wallpaper. Furthermore, a suspicion on her husband and Jennie increases when she is convinced that they are observing her behaviour. Along with visual hallucinations, olfactory hallucinations begins when she could smell the distinctive odour coming out of the yellow wallpaper. At night, the woman in the wallpaper shakes the bars in the pattern trying to break let free. Indeed, the protagonist's unconscious is trying to project her own feelings of being trapped through the hallucinations. The protagonist then begins believingto believe the woman behind the bars bad finally escaped and is creeping outside in the sunlight. Protagonist then peels off the wallpaper. Auditory hallucinations are prominent now as she hear the shrieks of the women who reside within the wallpaper. She even had suicidal tendencies but the bars on the windows prevent her from doing so. In morning she begins to creep around the perimeter of the room. She refuses to recognise her husband. She informs him that she has peeled off most of the wallpaper so that now no one can put her back inside the walls. John faints.