Postpartum Depression: Two Different Conceptions In Its Cure In “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Valenzuela 1
Valenzuela Andrades, Antonio Jesús
Dra. Silvia Castro Borrego
Literatura Norteamericana IV, A
26 January 2010

Postpartum depression: two different conceptions in its cure in “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

“John is a physician, and perharps [...] perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Heath Antology, 2005, p. 578)[1].
There is not a most beautiful actionthan bringing a child to life. This is an extraordinary natural gift given to women in order to perpetuate the species. But there is something mischievous beyond this powerful gift. To give birth to a new creature bears several problems that women have to endure. One of these issues have to do with the so-call postpartum depression, a disorder in some women that results from childbirth. Pregnancyis a state in which a woman is preparing her body to deliver a child, and this state brings about several hormonal changes by means of which a woman suffers many disorders in her inner that may lead to mental illness, or postpartum depression.
In the novella, "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, we are introduced to a woman, the narrator (also known as Jane), whosuffers from postpartum depression, and to a man, her husband (John), “a physician of high standing” (p. 578). As the novella opens, we are given information about the situation of the narrator: she is under treatment to recover from the postpartum depression she suffers. But as the story develops, we are

Valenzuela 2
going to see and compare how Jane and John, that is, the narrator and herhusband, have different conceptions on how to recover from mental disorder.
The novella shows the traditional way in which women suffering postpartum depressions were treated to recuperate. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John represents not only Gilman’s husband, Walter Stetson, but also the well-known physician Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, to whom Gilman was sent to treat her disorder. The methods shownin “The Yellow Wallpaper” are based on those used by Dr. Mitchell’s famous treatment: “rest cure”; this is a treatment by means of which the person who suffers any mental deterioration is “abstain[ed] from any and all physical activity and intellectual stimulation”[2].
In the opening of “The yellow Wallpaper” the reader is presented to a “colonial mansion” where the husband of the narratoraccomplishes his treatment. The narrator seems not to be agree with John’s decision to spend three months out of society, with no human contact (just her sister-in-law´s, Jennie, the housekeeper and babysitter). Jane feels the necesity to keep in contact with people; this is a real necessity, to “make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia” (p. 583). Jane’s need to visit her cousins makes great contrastwith John’s method, that is, to keep Jane out of society, but Jane’s quotation shows what she needs is human contact in order to recover from her illness.
The theraupetic methods also included “phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and” she is “absolutely forbidden to “work” until” she is “well again” (p. 579). These are theconventional methods used in the late nineteenth century by
Valenzuela 3
physicians to recover a patient suffering mental disorders. By contrast, we find Jane’s opposition and insatisfaction with these metods (“personally, I desagree with their ideas”).
Jane is forbidden to “work”. We know Gilman refers to writing; this task was the main one that made Jane feeling better, feeling liberated from herillness, as the narrator herself states: “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me” (p. 581), although, according to John, there is “nothing worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (p. 580), and we know that he is absolutely mistaken by pointing this out. This is very significative the way in which...