Before our class period this afternoon, I believed that the wife of “The Yellow Wall Paper” was insane from the moment the reader is introduced to her.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only does she write in a kind of scattered way, but her obsession with the room she was living in, as well as her hallucinations about people, objects, and colors on her wall made me think something was seriously wrong with her.\u00c2\u00a0 However, after our discussion today, I realized that perhaps she was almost forced into insanity because she was treated\u00c2\u00a0as if\u00c2\u00a0she already was insane, which is exactly what I was doing to her as a reader.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
It seems to me that such simple\u00c2\u00a0issues, even like the one that this woman had – a\u00c2\u00a0“temporary nervous depression” is what she calls it – \u00c2\u00a0can be blown out of proportion to such extremes that the individual that might suffer from such an issue begins to believe that their case is way more serious than it actually is.\u00c2\u00a0 To be honest with oneself about a problem, habit, or attitude is beneficial\u00c2\u00a0and is probably a step in the right direction towards solving such\u00c2\u00a0a minute\u00c2\u00a0problem.\u00c2\u00a0 However, to give a clinical name to something as common as a tendency in attitude or mood, or a reoccuring situation that makes one feel more depressed, or a naturally human habit such as a lack of paying full attention is to further the degree of seriousness regarding that common habit.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, the person who “suffers” from something like this then believes that something is actually completely wrong with\u00c2\u00a0them physically and mentaly\u00c2\u00a0and they soon come to believe that in order to “cure” this they must see a doctor, have a prescription, maybe even visit a psychologist just to get rid of this problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Had they not known that their simple attitude was such big deal, they might not have needed to see any specialist or start taking drugs at all; but, now that they believe this is the only thing that will heal them, they become dependent on whatever methods are given them.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I believe that this is what happened with the woman in the story.\u00c2\u00a0 She might have had, as was mentioned, slight depression after giving birth, which is not uncommon to women considering all of the detailed processes and hormones that are in them from being pregnant for so long.\u00c2\u00a0 It was when\u00c2\u00a0John decided that she needed to rest, to not work, to be shut up in order to fully be healed that her condition worsened.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did he start treating her as a mental patient – calling her “little girl”, reading to her, not letting her go anywhere, not allowing her to write – but she started acting in response to this, as if she really did have a mental problem.\u00c2\u00a0 As was mentioned, the fact that she asks herself whether she really is crazy proves that she in fact was not.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
This story proves then, the danger in labeling people and their behavior as if they were somehow ill mentally or physically.\u00c2\u00a0 I have no real background on mental and behavior disorders and I know that there are actual cases of people who really do need help because of their behavioral tendencies.\u00c2\u00a0 However, I do see a danger in our society of automatically labeling people as clinical cases because it seems to defeat the hope of them getting over the thing that is causing their behavior to continue in this manner.<\/p>\n
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Before our class period this afternoon, I believed that the wife of “The Yellow Wall Paper” was insane from the moment the reader is introduced to her.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only does she write in a kind of scattered way, but her obsession with the room she was living in, as well as her hallucinations about people, … Continue reading “Yellow Wall Paper” in class<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}