Gaslighting By Jenny Gilman Analysis
Despite the great strides that women have taken in order to become prominent members of society there are still a great many things that hold women back, the main one being the men in women’s lives. Typically, a woman spends most of their time with the person they choose to spend their lives with and think highly of their partner’s opinions. Emotional abuse is a common thread in stories of women’s oppression, their husbands holding them back by berating them. The most common type of emotional abuse that happens to women is a type called ‘gaslighting’ which entails that a person uses, “emotional manipulation in which the gaslighter tries (consciously or not) to induce in someone the sense that her reactions… qualify as crazy.” (Abramson 2).
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83) Most women are raised to believe that they are too sensitive and are prone to overthinking things, so much so that sometimes women cannot differentiate between reality and their worries. To a woman with a mental illness, the worry that they really are making up some of the things that happen to them is ten-fold. Being deemed “crazy” would make anything a woman said invalid due to the fact that they were not in the proper frame of mind. Telling a woman that she is faking her illness serves to make her overthink everything and make herself believe the only thing going wrong is within herself, rather than looking at the people around her who may be influencing her in a negative way. John also tells the narrator that she “really [is better],” (Gardner et al. 83) rather than listening to any complaints she has that would have signaled to him that her mental state was devolving. Her husband has no idea that he is making his wife worse by pushing the idea that she does not need any help and should stop worrying about what she believes is wrong with her. This form of emotional abuse, telling a person that there is nothing wrong with them even when they feverently believe there is, causes too many women to hold back when speaking about the things that bother them. Women do not speak out in fear of their husband lashing out at them by telling them that they are imagining the way he twists her words around and cause her to feel as if things are simply happening in her
83) Most women are raised to believe that they are too sensitive and are prone to overthinking things, so much so that sometimes women cannot differentiate between reality and their worries. To a woman with a mental illness, the worry that they really are making up some of the things that happen to them is ten-fold. Being deemed “crazy” would make anything a woman said invalid due to the fact that they were not in the proper frame of mind. Telling a woman that she is faking her illness serves to make her overthink everything and make herself believe the only thing going wrong is within herself, rather than looking at the people around her who may be influencing her in a negative way. John also tells the narrator that she “really [is better],” (Gardner et al. 83) rather than listening to any complaints she has that would have signaled to him that her mental state was devolving. Her husband has no idea that he is making his wife worse by pushing the idea that she does not need any help and should stop worrying about what she believes is wrong with her. This form of emotional abuse, telling a person that there is nothing wrong with them even when they feverently believe there is, causes too many women to hold back when speaking about the things that bother them. Women do not speak out in fear of their husband lashing out at them by telling them that they are imagining the way he twists her words around and cause her to feel as if things are simply happening in her