The Effect of Isolation

Through out the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and the film, “Santa Sangre,” the main characters finds themselves led into a state of insanity. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator explains that she is suffering from post partum depression, leaving her husband to treat her with rest cure or bed rest. During this time, she is placed in a solitary room with walls covered in yellow wallpaper. Similarly, through out “Santa Sangre,” Phoenix grows up with his family in a circus, only to end up losing them. He was locked in a trailer as his father had an affair, murdered his mother by cutting off both her arms and then committed suicide in front of Phoenix. He is then forced to be on his own and grow up living an introverted life away from society. The over abundance of social isolation these characters experience leads to their states of insanity.

Through out “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is locked away in an isolated room, which was supposed to cure her disorder, but instead, the treatment makes her worse. With the locked door and barred windows, she is secluded from the real world and what was once supposed to refresh her mind, dulls it. She finds herself only exposed to the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her, which is explained as a scattered and unorganized pattern. The constant isolation, time for examination and reflections of this wallpaper causes her to become further insane. “On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind” (6.1). This shows that she is aware that this pattern is an annoyance to someone with a normal mind. Although, for her, she has nothing else to focus on; therefore she relies on her imagination to pass the time. Eventually she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper leaving her