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MDD in Classic Literature

Hello everyone, I just read a short story for my English Literature class, and I couldn't help but notice that the narrator portrayed many traits of Maladaptive daydreaming.

The story is "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it is written from the perspective of a woman who was prescribed the "rest cure", which basically means she was confined to a room for three months.

Here is a link : The Yellow Wallpaper (it is a google books page, so hopefully it works for everyone)

To me, the fact that she was "given to fancies" but tried very hard to stop them and as a result felt very nervous and paranoid sounds like she was going through withdrawal. I noticed some other things too, like how she feels relief in writing.

So I was wondering if anyone else feels that the author could have been a maladaptive daydreamer.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ShellyBelly on September 22, 2013 at 1:32am

Well, this story is about a woman literally going crazy. Shes has psychosis because she doesn't seem to realize that she is acting abnormally. We realize our behaviors are abnormal.

Permalink Reply by Beth W on September 25, 2013 at 12:14pm

But I believe it is the author that has MDD. This story was written to disprove the "effectiveness" of the current doctors' favorite "rest cure", which means that the patient was encouraged to be locked up in a room and forbidden from doing anything but lie in bed. The author herself had undergone this, and the character's behavior in the story was not meant to be a truthful account, but a way of illustrating the "horror" of having to do absolutely nothing for months.

ShellyBelly said:

Well, this story is about a woman literally going crazy. Shes has psychosis because she doesn't seem to realize that she is acting abnormally. We realize our behaviors are abnormal.