The real-world translatability of psychiatric illness in“The Yellow Wallpaper,” therefore, comes across espe-cially clearly: the narrator (diarist) in the story finds her-self at that same “borderline of utter mental ruin” whereGilman herself felt stranded until she took matters intoher own hands and rejected her treatment, the respectedRest Cure.

his does not even begin to cover the identitiesthe diarist develops over the course of her illness journey,in which her conviction in her own experiences (“I amsick!” [ 3, p. 1]) wars with the minimizing label given byher physician husband (“there is really nothing the mat-ter with one but temporary nervous depression” [3, p. 1]):her self-perceived illness identity differs vastly from thatattributed to her by others, and this discrepancy, on topof the complications and issues tied to her other inter-secting identities, contributes to the frustration she feelsas a patient.7

representing how psychiatric patients perceive the worldas well as how others perceive them. Reader responsesevoked by such literature can, in turn, serve as potentmotivation to improve current research practices intreatment development.

When read with a focus on these character experiencesand perceptions, gothic literature provides an acces-sible, broad-ranging supply of case studies potentially