Angela Vargas

Midterm essay 

October 26,2020

The spirit of perverse vs Mental Illness

Mental illness plays an important part when the spirit of perverse arrives in a situation or the action of a person. The narrators for the story “The black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The yellow wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s are known to practice using a lot of perverse actions due to their mental illness. Their mental illness converts them into aggravated and careless character in many parts of the story. 

The spirit of perverse and mental illness is shown in the story “The yellow wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins due to the narrators not listening to her husband John about not writing through her illness. The narrator shows a lot of mental illness throughout the story in one part the narrator explains how she feels more angrier than ever “ I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.” Also being inside a room she doesn’t enjoy brings the worst of her and not being able to write too. The spirit of perverse begins by her not agreeing that she’s sick and has a mental illness which her husband John practices a lot of unnecessary remedies for her. The need to do what’s right is important for her since she knows she’s sick but doesn’t trust her husband to cure her. Writing helps with her illness because she feels relieved when she writes but her husband John doesn’t allow her because it is not going to help her. In that matter she goes behind his back and writes about the yellow wallpaper in her room and begins to hallucinate about it. 

The story “The black cat” narrator plays a character with many issues surrounding him and making him into this monster of a person. The narrator explains how he never had an issue with his family but throughout his life things change which lead him to become an alcoholic. The narrator’s anger and pulse intuition got him to harm his wife and cat pluto. The narrator suffered from trust issues and believed his cat was his worst enemy and wanted to harm him. Due to the alcohol issues his illness began to be servere and took a lot of action as to even tried to murder the cat just by a simple look. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself using intemperate language to my wife.” The narrator couldn’t control the need for his high temperament which made him lose his mind whenever he felt the need to harm those he loved. 

The narrators of both “The black cat” and “the yellow wallpaper” suffer from mental health which creates a lot of violence and actions that harm themselves and their surroundings. Both of the narrators couldn’t control their emotions and had a high impulse to take actions upon themselve.  The narrator of “The yellow wallpaper” had a break point where she couldn’t control this anxiety and depression about the yellow wallpaper and she began to rip it off due to her anger and despair of being locked in the room. “I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth.” She knew she couldn’t go outside the room since John didn’t allow her but her impulses and her need to be heard got her to her limits. This scene can be compare to the narrator of “The black cat” when he tried to get rid off pluto one night after coming home drunk because pluto was ignoring him “My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin- nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.” The narrator suffers an anxiety and temperament attack which lead him to just see anger. The narrator felt as if Pluto wasn’t there to support him as much. Both of the narrator wanted to be heard about what was happening with them and their illness. In both of the stories the narrators are shown to take actions and tried to be heard but they take this action violently towards the other characters. 

The spirit of perverse played a huge role with the mental illness because both of the narrators know they are doing the wrong but had the need to harm and take action. For example in the story “The yellow wallpaper” when John didn’t allow her(The narrator) to write she felt the need to go behind his back and do it since she felt it was curing her. As well with the narrator of “The black cat” he felt as if nobody was watching him struggle with his illness of alcoholism and high temperament. Both of the characters took actions with their own hands not caring who they hurt or if they hurt themselves.