Physical and Mental Abuse in Yellow WallpaperWhat is abuse? Abuses are not just affected. Abuse is any harmful or controlling action that affects the well-being of another person. Many people use the term "abuse" to mean physical abuse, but there are many more ways to abuse someone than hitting them. Physical abuse is the most terrifying and most obvious of all, but it is only one of many types of abuse. Here are some of the names for the different categories of abuse: physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological and verbal abuse, forced confinement, pet or property abuse, financial abuse, and child abuse. The two abuses I will focus on will be physical abuse and mental abuse. I decided to choose the topic of abuse after watching the movie The Yellow Wallpaper. After watching the film and seeing how badly Mary Wollstonecraft was treated, it made me want to learn more about the abuse of women and what could be done to break the chain of abuse. I believe that no abuse is acceptable and that any man who has ever abused a woman should face serious consequences. This is my main point in this article, that the laws are not strong enough and that more efforts should be made so that no woman is ever abused in any shape or form again. To start, I'll provide some statistics about the police and how they handle calls from abused wives. “The police were more likely to respond within five minutes if the offender was a stranger than if the offender was known to the female victim” (“Response”1). Furthermore, it was recorded that a woman from Boston once called saying that her husband had beaten her and the policeman's response was, "Look, lady, you pay your bills, don't you? What you do in the house is yours." business" (Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz 301). With a response like this, why bother calling the police. That's why we need to come together and start over. We need to let everyone in a position of power know that any abuse of women is wrong The truth is that “90% of all family violence defendants are never prosecuted, and one-third of cases that would be considered felonies if committed by strangers are dismissed as misdemeanors (a misdemeanor)” (“Response)"1).