Review of 'The yellow wall-paper' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Very good! It's about a woman who suffers from a kind of nervous depression, and her husband (a doctor), who doesn't believe there's anything wrong with her.
In the beginning, I really empathised with both the woman and her husband. It's obvious from how she describes him that he really does love her. But he's ignorant, and this is in a time when men and woman had a well-defined place in society, and neither were allowed to deviate from it.
I do believe that in the beginning of the story, her problem is very slight, but all of the things her husband instructs her to do only serve to make her condition worse. He still can't see it, but I think he wants the best for her.
By the end of the story, she is suffering paranoid delusions, and I don't think she would've gotten to that point if her husband had taken her seriously in the beginning.
This is a powerfully hard-hitting tale of a creative mind trapped in the body of a mere woman, and in that time, nobody takes a woman seriously. It's not her husband's fault, either; he's just been conditioned that way, like all men of his time. But so many atrocities were committed against women in those days, consciously, and as a result of pure apathy. Today, she would've gotten all the help she needed!