‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, begins with the narrator describing the yellow wallpaper as the worst paper she had ever seen. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins to write when she looks to be suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator appears to have discovered some advantages to writing about her despair. She frequently refers to writing as a form of expression “a sigh of release’ for her She’s referring to some sort of mental relaxation. She is attempting to dispute her husband’s insistence on a “rest cure:” “This necessitates her staying at home and resting all day. She fights her own feelings to some extent, but she recognizes their existence, at least at the start of the novel. She acknowledges the need of valuing her own views and feelings, as well as the need to express herself, up to a degree. In the beginning of the story, she maintains her imagination and, at least in her writing, provides some resistance to her husband’s beliefs. She begins to suppress her imaginative thoughts and beliefs in order to outwardly accept her husband’s scientific ideals. Her husband/doctor, on the other hand, bans her from expressing herself, indicating a lack of communication between them.

The mental health of the narrator is deteriorating. Her husband and doctor discourage her from writing because they believe it will exacerbate her mental instability, but she continues to secretly record her thoughts. Meanwhile, her thoughts and ideas continue to flood in unchecked, but she no longer has a healthy means of dealing with them. The narrator has reached a point where only a complete change in treatment will save her from mental collapse. Even in John’s absence, the narrator becomes progressively dejected and thus less willing to write as a result of John’s continual discouragement of writing and other forms of self-expression. Nonetheless, she feels driven to continue authoring this account when she can, and finds it liberating to express herself. Unfortunately, journaling serves as her only source of solace, as she is unable to express her thoughts—even about her own treatment—otherwise, and this case demonstrates that it is insufficient to maintain mental health.