Mental Health in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Invisible Man

Character Essay

According to the website Wiseoldsaying “There is nothing invisible in this universe! There is only our lack of eyesight!”- Mehmet Murat ildan. So many of us in society feel invisible at one point or another whether that is being part of a community, family or even within our minds. It just takes time to open our eye some time to know that we are truly not alone in this world. In the stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Invisible Man,” you will find examples of physiological distress of modern society and the pressures of one environment and the effect it had on one’s mental state. Novels like The Invisible Man by HG Wells and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are both novels of the main character feeling as if they are invisible. These novels simonize signs of mental health on multiple levels. In this paper, readers will be learning about the social struggles of mental health and the feeling of isolation within one’s mental being.

While Griffin the main character in The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells exhibits drastic amounts of intelligence, he also exhibits a lack of confidence. Griffin’s lack of confidence is portrayed through living in a constant state of anxiety about his future. According to Majken Hirche characters similar to Griffin’s mental health could be compared to Frankenstein’s. While in The Invisible Man, Griffin the University College student discovers a way to make himself invisible. This becomes a dangerous story of power in modern science. Griffin grows progressively more self-absorbed as he becomes more invisible to the world around him. According to Paul A Cantor the author of The Invisible Man and the Invisible Hand: H.G. Wells’s Critique of Capitalism

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“This type of portrayals of mad scientists stretches back to Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, the prototype of the man who isolates himself from his fellows to pursue an ambitious project and in the process loses his humanity, unleashing forces he can neither truly understand nor control.” Griffin and Frankenstein could be considered one of the most pathological narcissists being characterized as characters that would destroy their being and the people around them.

By being in a state of compulsive and crazed hunt for divine power exposes characters like Griffin as a philological narcissist that suffer from not only depression but a possible personality disorder. Griffin’s insensible capability of being insignificant and substandard is the center of Griffin’s mental state throughout this novel. By being invisible Griffin believes in the unparalleled success and seeing himself as a shining star to unlimited commendations. Griffin sees himself as a Godlike power and mastermind of intelligence. This can be compared to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on how the husband isolating his wife and mother of his child from the world. The narrator from this novel also believes she is invisible to the world as she suffers from a post-partum depression along with hysteria. A vital part to note about the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was that the main character never officially illustrated that she died, but only that she escaped for the enclosure of the world around her and the seemingly unattainable mental state of freedom. “The Yellow Wallpaper” wholly illustrates how a woman felt the pressure to do what she felt was the acceptable thing to do by acting within these principles. Her mental breakdown began when her husband prescribed her to a bed rest also know as rest cure which enforced his wife to incarceration without any work or mental exercise such as writing outside of the domestic confinement of her room. From this imprisonment, she begins to feel as if she is trapped, alone and unable to express her struggles with her inner self. These struggles make her feel as if she is powerless and inability to communicate with the outside world beside her husband. Therefore between an anxious mother, over possessive husband and a big damp room enclosed with stale wallpaper play vital role in driving her insane. The overwhelming husband attentiveness combined with the lonely atmosphere exhorts an uneasy personality of the wife, causing her to sink into a state of psychosis to the point that she sees herself in the wallpaper. Ultimately feeling corned by her surrounding but as well as from her husband’s control. The more she struggles to face of these mounting obstacles, the more her mental health and self-esteem disappear into the darkness of depression ultimately feeling as if she is invisible.

The power of one mental state and how it can affect someone’s daily life and the way it may make someone feel as if that person were limitless or superior to another can be the underlying issue of one’s fear of being removed. These types of behaviors exhibit a state of the repercussion of the aftermath of no consequences that takes away the notion of Griffin’s goodwill. Griffin’s nature promotes his madness when he begins to steal and starts his binge of breaking into houses. Ultimately the invisibility that Griffin sees as power is more of a cruise. The invisible man finds himself ignored, and no longer able to enjoy the everyday custom like enjoying a meal. While the community around him are capable of enjoying the simplest things such as lunch this type of action make Griffin feel defeated which angers his madness and mania. This madness comes from the core of fear that he might expose himself and the rejection and abuse of his brotherhood from his University. Through the outraged from his frustrations and the accomplishment to survive he retreats from society to conceal his work but appoint his power by expressing his inner fears and instead shows that he holds himself in higher regards to social values. This features the dramatic public unveiling of his true form exclaiming:

“You don’t understand … who I am or what I am. I’ll show you. By Heaven! I’ll show you.’… It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing openmouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! … The man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!” H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man p 37

This type of variability brings a character like The Narrator and Griffin to a state of unstable emotions due to the lack of control around them. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are people that may be in between psychosis and anxiety/depression, better known as Neurosis. For these two characters, these type of variability exposes some sort of emotion outside of the “norm” of what people are used to, making people around feel uncomfortable.

In comparing the two Characters’ and their mental state in both of these novels, you can see patterns of both mental health disorders from depression to personality disorders. The author’s point of analyzing mental health in these novels could be considered one to bring awareness to mental health but bring awareness to the world around us. “There is nothing invisible in this universe! There is only our lack of eyesight!”- Mehmet Murat ildan.

Work Cited

• Handcock, Tarryn. Revelation and the Unseen in H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man.
• Muratildan, Mehmet Murat ildan. “Invisible Sayings and Invisible Quotes | Wise Old Sayings.” Invisible Sayings and Invisible Quotes | Wise Old Sayings, www.wiseoldsayings.com/invisible-quotes/.
• BC Division, Canadian Mental Health Association. “Borderline Personality Disorder.” Borderline Personality Disorder | Here to Help, 2014, www.heretohelp.bc.ca/factsheet/borderline-personality-disorder.
• cantor, Paul A. “The Invisible Man and the Invisible Hand: H.G. Wells’s Critique of Capitalism | Paul A. Cantor.” Mises Institute, 31 Aug. 2010, mises.org/library/invisible-man-and-invisible-hand-hg-wellss-critique-capitalism.
• Hirche, majken. “Indadvendt.dk.” Indadvendtdk RSS, 8 Mar. 2012, 10:55am, www.indadvendt.dk/2012/03/a-psychological-analysis-of-frankenstein/.
• H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man, ed. 2005 (London: Penguin Classics, 1897), 37
• Newman, Heather, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper. Rain City Projects, 2003.
• Steven McLean, ―Science behind the Blinds: Scientist and Society in The Invisible Man‖, in The Early Fiction of H.G. Wells: Fantasies of Science (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 69, 71–72.
• Tess. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Full Text – The Yellow Wallpaper – Owl Eyes, www.owleyes.org/text/yellow-wallpaper/read/yellow-wallpaper#root-422327-46.