Who is crazy; how do you know?  Typically people who are crazy stand out in some way, be it talking to people or things that aren't there or flapping their arms around dancing in circles in broad daylight.  But that is in extreme cases.  Insanity can be more subtle than that, man or woman, everyone is susceptible.  It can lay dormant for years in a person's genetics and spring up suddenly, a sudden shock or trauma can cause it, or it could be something day-in and day-out simply grinding away at your sanity.  Then, it is in the way that we treat the mentally ill that depends on whether they can be integrated into society.  During the time of The Yellow Wallpaper (late 1800s to early 1900s) both women and the mentally ill were treated nearly the same, powerless, like infants, and must be taken care of by the men and male doctors around them.  The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, stresses that the way people treat both women and the mentally ill is morally wrong. 

In this story the main character is suffering from Postpartum Depression, something that can occur after giving birth in new mothers, Gilman refers to it as a temporary nervous depression or a slight hysterical tendency.  Postpartum Depression can be caused by troubles in birth or feeling no connection to the child that is born, though the latter does not seem to be the case as she refers the baby as "that blessed child" (214) and takes solace in the fact that the baby is happy and not in the room with the dreaded wallpaper. What her husband prescribes to her for this hysteria is to stay in bed and do nothing else, often times never seeing anyone else, with no outside contact, just a room with a bed and ugly wallpaper.  There have been studies of what sorts of things happen to those too unfortunate to fall into solitary confinement, a woman was once held prisoner in Iran accused of spying and spent 10,000 hours with very little human contact.  "In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there," she wrote in the New York Times in 2011. "At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn't until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realized the screams were my own." (BBC How Extreme Isolation Warps the Mind).  One explanation for these hallucinations, as seen in both cases, given by cognitive psychologists says that the brain is constantly receiving dozens of hundreds of inputs every minute of every day and firing off the neurons so that we can use the data given by our senses and make sense of it.  In the case of solitary confinement, the brain is receiving significantly less stimuli and so it fills in the blanks with what it thinks should go there.  That is why in the story our lady protagonist's brain fills in the blanks with a lady trapped within the bars of the wall paper as she is trapped within the bars of the room.

The man who first developed this 'Cure' was named Weir Mitchell, as mentioned in the Yellow Wallpaper, an 'Easter Egg' if you will; proving to the reader that this sort of treatment does occur, to both women and the insane, and this is what happens.  In his book Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked, He compares the brain to a muscle; a muscle, if over taxed shows distress and the owner of said muscle would require bed rest, and the brain is dissimilar, however, since one does not realized when he has over taxed his brain, only does he stop when his back hurts, his eyes are heavy, and his fingers ache.  Mitchell then refers to a scholar who in later college years managed to overtax his brain; he had frequent headaches and lacked the ability to sleep.  He cautions others from working too hard and recommends preventive measures such as limiting the hours of working and eating meals at regular intervals but not for too long.  So, it is easy to understand why he would prescribe rest if he thinks the brain is over worked.  The main problem in The Yellow Wallpaper is that the protagonist's brain is not necessarily overworked and does not need total rest, but being a woman and her husband and brother being physicians, they think they know her mind better than she does.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman had a difficult life starting with childhood, when young her father left her and her mother, as a result her mother raised Gilman by herself, they moved around a lot and Gilman's education suffered because of it.  She later married an artist by the name of Charles Stetson; they had a daughter named Katherine.  After which Gilman suffered from severe depression and had to endure various unusual treatments, undoubtedly the inspiration of the Yellow Wallpaper.  Though she is most known for this work of fiction, she wrote other non-fictions such as The Home: Its Work and Influence and Does a Man Support His Wife?  However her most well known fiction Women and Economics, published in 1898, was even used as a textbook for a time.  She also had established a magazine called the Forerunner, a feminist magazine that featured various essays, opinion pieces, fiction, poetry and excerpts from novels.  She married for a second time, a rare thing in the 1900s and towards the end of her life she found that she had breast cancer and rather than face various medical procedures, she chose death at the age of seventy-five ("Charlotte Perkins Gilman." Bio.com).  She knew the strife of both being a woman and being considered crazy at a time where if you are either of those things people tell you that you do not know your own mind, you cannot be responsible for your own life, so the sane men must do it for you.

During this timeframe women across America are beginning to fight for equal rights.  Susan B. Anthony demanded that the Fourteenth Amendment include women as well as black men. She and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Women's Suffrage Association in 1869.  Many women joined the association but women did not get the right to vote until 1919 under the Nineteenth Amendment. It was also during this time that women began to work in the business and industry and the number of women employed jumped from 2.6 to 7.8 million, although men were still given the higher paying jobs.   However, there will always be those who favor tradition over change, some women were against equality of the sexes.  They argued that politics were no place for a woman, and feared that if they were to be involved they would become more manly, and many men shared these opinions (Women Suffrage in the Progressive Era Library of Congress).  One of the characters represents these women, Jennie, "John's sister," the story says, "She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which makes me sick" (212).  It fits a description of the conservative women, housekeepers that think that writing corrupts a woman's mind.  The men in the story are just the same, both John, the husband, and the brother, both are physicians and both think that they know best.  John even threatens to send her to the psychiatrist, Weir Mitchell.  Though she does acknowledge that they are only doing what they think is right and tries to do things their way because she loves them.

Feminism, the madness of being alone and the difficulties of depression, the up rise and oppression of women, and the lives of Weir Mitchell and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are all contributing factors to the story of The Yellow wallpaper, a story which takes place during the late 1800s.  During this time if you are anything but a white man, you are powerless. Especially if you are a woman or mentally ill as shown in the Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

