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The Yellow Wallpaper is a story that has inspired me greatly.
I was comparing my Agatha from Too Many Dogs to the narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper.
In Chapter Two, Freya, from Too Many Dogs, Agatha feels the familiar depression coming over her.
The next day, she could not get out of bed. Agatha was exhausted, and over night, while she slept heavily after taking one of her sleeping pills, the familiar depression enveloped her in its grasp like a fog and somewhere in the back of her mind, anxiety and dread blasted within her soul, like a foghorn with varying volumes. Her dogs curled around her, in different positions, on the bed, as if they had been playing Twister, and had just collapsed into their last stance.
The depression was coupled with anxiety.
Suddenly, she was terrified of leaving the house.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, our narrator lives in another era. Back then, it was customary to commit people who suffered from mental illness into asylums, or sanitariums, as well as prescribe rest as a cure. Our narrator is locked inside a room by her husband, who is actually a doctor!
But she is pretty depressed.
"I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh o"n me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things."- Gilman (649)
I explore depression and bipolar disorder in my novel, Too Many Dogs. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator eventually gets out of the room, much to the consternation of her husband, and in my novel, Agatha does overcome her demons.
I think its important to write about these things. I think it helps other people, suffering from depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, realize that they are not alone.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. U.S. National Library of Medicine.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/literatureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf