Answer:
The excerpt from the story that best supports this theme is. I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.
Explanation:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," throws light on the theme that the lack of freedom of expression can cause people to become mentally unstable. Gilman draws the reader’s attention towards the need of self-expression which was a NO for the women in that age.
The mental restrictions placed upon the narrator had a massive effect on her than a physical one would have had. This ultimately drove her insane. She was imposed to hide her anxieties and fears so as to conserve the picture of a happy marriage and to show that she was winning the fight against depression.
She is put under compulsory silence and idleness from the beginning which is sophistically termed as a “resting cure.” She is forced to be passive and is forbidden from self-expression even writing. Her husband John instructs her to use her self-control but that leads to the worst part.
The narrator’s insanity is a result of the repression and due to the constant longing for an outlet to express. This leads the narrator to keep a secret journal in order to provide “relief” to her mind. That’s why self-expression becomes one of the major themes on which the depth of the plot develops.
