Medical experiences are completely dependent on an individual's gender. Men and women, in most cases, are more prone to illnesses, which differ in nature. Men are more prone to conditions, which affect their physical health while women tend to suffer from conditions, which affect their emotion/psychological health. This paper seeks to support the notion, which states that medical experiences depend on the gender of the patient in question.
In the case of George Dedlow and the narrator in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, the two protagonists, who differ in gender, undergo completely different medical experiences. They are, however, both adversely affected by their illnesses. George suffers a gunshot during the civil war. It causes him immense pain, and especially due to the fact that he received medical treatment after his wound had worsened. The narrator in the book ‘The yellow wallpaper’ is, however, a victim of circumstances. She suffers from depression and is forced to take as much bedrest as possible (Stetson, 04). The narrator is responding to the emotional torture she is subjected to by her husband and the psychiatrists she is forced to deal with. She knows that her condition requires more exposure to things that bring her happiness instead of being kept behind closed doors in a boring room. The presence of her room only acts to escalate her depression.
Members of the male gender are in some way or the other responsible for their sickness. They make the decisions that lead to them getting hurt or getting sick. Dedlow chooses to go to war. He is, therefore, responsible for the situation that he finds himself in (Weir, 07). Nobody forced him to join the army or to fight. He acted out of necessity, and there are consequences that came with it. The narrator in The Yellow paper is however forced into her situation by the people around her, and the environment she finds herself in. The book aims to address the problems that women face in marriages and the manner in which they are forced to do things they do not want to do. John chooses not to listen to his wife. He insists that nothing is wrong with her when there is indeed something wrong with her. The narrator barely gets to have a say throughout the book. She is forced to live her life the way John her husband wants her to live her life. She gets resentful of him, and she vents out her anger and frustrations on the ugly wallpaper that she is forced to hang in her room throughout her sickness (Thraikill, 27). Her depression, to a larger extent, is caused by and escalated by her husband John who disregards her opinion. The narrator is bitter towards her husband and towards the psychiatrists who confine her behind closed doors in a house that she loathes.
Conclusively, Dedlow and John’s wife all act to voice out the disparity between the two genders in the medical world. The male and the female genders differ widely in their medical experiences. Women are rarely faced with illnesses, which affect their physical anatomy especially those resulting from hard work of war. Men, on the other hand, have fewer cases of psychological health issues. The two genders experience the world differently and can therefore not have similar illnesses. The psychological, medical experiences that women go through are, however, affected by the males in their lives and are usually from the home environment.
Works Cited
Charlotte Stetson. The Yellow Wall Paper. The New England Magazine.1892. Print.
Jane F. Thrailkill .Doctoring "The Yellow Wallpaper". The John Hopkins University Press. 2002. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30032030 Accessed: 09-06-2016 13:37 UTC
Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir). The autobiography of a quack and The case of George Dedlow, New York The Century co., 1905.Print. Retrieved from:
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951002397895q
