“How are you?”
How many times during the day do you hear or ask this question? We all have a personal standard response to this question – “I’m great”….or “I’m doing well”…. Or just plain, “fine”.
When people ask, “How are you?”, do they really want to know? Do they want to know that you are having a rough morning or day? That the dog threw up all over your work or your mom is sick or you are feeling rather depressed today?
I would argue…absolutely not! People want to hear that you are doing…fine.
Why is that? Do we honestly care about the true condition of people?
Do we want to tell people how we are really feeling?
In today’s society, it is easier to hide how we feel than confide in others. This seems to be a commonality among genders and races.
The Fiction
Charlotte Perkins Gilman highlights this fact in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper. Written in 1892., this is a simple yet mysterious story about a family that decides to stay in a rented house over the summer.
Set in the Victorian Age, the reader immediately is able to see the impact of living in a patriarchal society. Hiding your feelings was a requirement for women. Women should be seen and not heard. Women were to have children and be perfect mothers. Women were to be the perfect wife, hosting weekly teas, and fawning over their husbands.
Does that mean that depression and fatigue didn’t happen back then? Of course not! It means that caring about how a woman feels was not something people valued.
The husband, a doctor, believes his wife is tired and needs a “rest” – whereas our unnamed protagonist says she simply has a “nervous condition”. Written in a journal format, the reader discovers that despite her protests, her husband insists on complete bed rest and she is locked in her bedroom surrounded by walls plastered in ugly yellow wallpaper. This isolation eventually leads to even more madness and the decorative yellow wallpaper becomes a character of its own in the short story….no spoiler alerts here!
Throughout the short story, Perkins gives the reader subtle hints that our narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. She gets nervous around the baby and doesn’t visit the nursery very often. In a constant cycle of depression and anger, she starts to go stir crazy and at a pivotal point of refection states, “But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way—it is such a relief!
Isn’t it a relief when we can express ourselves – when we can either write or speak about what is weighing on us? Yet, fear of people not understanding or accepting us keeps us from expressing our true selves.
Perkins structures “The Yellow Wallpaper” around the narrator’s journal entries allowing us to see the downward spiral of her postpartum depression. Using this narrative structure along with a fully developed main character, Perkin gives us a glimpse into what happens when mental health is misunderstood and ignored.
Of course, after reading the story, you may want to respond with, “well that story takes place during the Victorian Period and things are different today”.
Are they?
The Non-fiction
We may be much more educated on post-partum depression and the issues surrounding mental health. Websites like Cleveland Clinic offer invaluable insight into the signs and treatments for all types of depression.
But are we better off? Is it better? According to Postpartumdepression.org, in the United States alone:
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Approximately 70% to 80% of women will experience, at a minimum, the ‘baby blues’. Many of these women will experience the more severe condition of postpartum depression or a related condition.
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The reported rate of clinical postpartum depression among new mothers is between 10% to 20%.
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One recent study found that 1 in 7 women may experience PPD in the year after giving birth. With approximately 4 million live births occurring each year in the United States, this equates to almost 600,000 postpartum depression diagnoses.
These are staggering statistics that insist we pay attention to the signs of post-partum depression. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” there are plenty of obvious signs for our narrator and her physician husband that more than “bed rest” is needed. We can’t ignore women’s mental health or minimize its severity.
Writer, Social Activist, Intellectual – Charlotte Perkins
Perkins had first-hand knowledge of depression and childbirth. In fact, she went through several radical treatments in order to help with her mental illness. She was a woman’s rights activist, lecturer, and intellectual. Unfortunately, Perkins was diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer and instead of suffering she committed suicide.
Learn more about Perkins and “The Yellow Wallpaper” watch this episode of Crash Course.
A Hybrid
We may want to claim that times have changed and women don’t live in a patriarchal society such as our narrator. We want to celebrate that we have better, more modern medicine now to help those women who are suffering.
But the fiction of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is entwined with the non-fiction reality of the above statistics. Women may have more freedom and medicine may be better – but if we don’t see the warning signs – we may be too late. It is vital we stay educated and aware of post-partum depression. We need to start caring about people, listening to people, and most importantly be more transparent about who we are and how we are feeling.
So, before you start your journey into awareness by reading this short story, let me ask you….
How are you, really?