Post 2/Reseach/ The Yellow Wallpaper/ Juliette Reyes

The first article I read, In Defense of Despair by Hanif Abdurraqib, discusses a joke Hanif Abdurraqib tells: “I picked a pretty rough time actually to want to be alive; in retrospect, back when I wanted to die, things were not actually all that bad.” He explains, “The joke is that I was once heartbroken enough to invent my own apocalypse. The joke is that I stayed alive long enough to witness a few real ones.” One quote that stood out to me was, “Your pain is unique, because it’s yours. And you get to have that. But, when pressed up against all of the pain in the whole wide world, it isn’t special. It can be unique, but it can’t always be special.” I like this quote because it puts things into perspective for me—it reminds me that I often get stuck on small things that don’t matter, while also acknowledging that it’s okay to feel the way you feel. My question, however, is how this personal experience connects with The Yellow Wallpaper. Both works share a focus on mental health, but The Yellow Wallpaper specifically addresses outdated beliefs about postpartum depression during the 1900s.

In a second round of research, I found the article Women With Postpartum Depression Experienced Brain Changes During Pregnancy, Study Finds by Pam Belluck. This article discusses research on postpartum depression and how pregnancy affects the brain. I learned that postpartum depression occurs in about one out of seven women. The article also explains how certain parts of the brain, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, can increase or decrease during and after pregnancy, which may contribute to postpartum depression. This research helped me better understand why postpartum depression can occur, but it also left me wondering what kinds of beliefs doctors held during the 1900s—and why, as shown in The Yellow Wallpaper, women experiencing postpartum were often forced into isolation.

 The Art Intervention:

For my art intervention, I would like to create character designs inspired by The Yellow Wallpaper. I plan to design the narrator, her husband, and the wallpaper itself as characters.