
“The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a perfect portrayal of the rest cure and it exemplifies how the rest cure was practiced, or forced, upon women in the late nineteenth century. The rest cure was invented by Weir Mitchell primarily to keep mentally ill women on bed rest until they were cured (Bassuk 249). John, from “The Yellow Wallpaper”, attempted to replicate this treatment on his wife by taking her to an isolated house back in the woods for a couple of months. He also made her stay in the one room in the house she had a particular hatred towards. But there was an unexpected turn of events when she became fascinated by the wallpaper that surrounded the room. Because of the rest cure, she spent almost the entirety of her days in this room, and a determination grew from within her that forced her to figure out the pattern that covered the old ripped, stained, smudged, smelly walls. Mitchell’s goal with the rest cure was to cripple the mind of the woman, without crippling her body. He strongly believed the rest cure was a seamless treatment that would guarantee a woman to regain a stable mental state, but more often than not this deemed untrue. The woman from Gilman’s text is a perfect example of what can happen when the rest cure fails to cripple the woman’s mind, and because of isolation ends up empowering her mind instead. By not suppressing her thoughts, she kept them to herself and continued to play mind games with her husband. His mind weakened by thinking the rest cure was having a positive impact on her, while her mind was being empowered by her journal that kept track of her every thought about the yellow wallpaper.

Mitchell would judge the mental health of a woman by her face and body; he was under the impression that the face was a direct portal to the mind. So over time, if the patient’s body looked healthier than when they were first admitted, then their minds had become healthier as well; therefore, the rest cure was successful. Both Mitchell and John made it clear to their patient(s) that they, as the men, were in charge and that the women were to be completely inferior with little to no say in anything. Mitchell believed women were inferior to men solely because of their organs, specifically their ovaries, and that “female irritability was firmly rooted in women’s reproductive physiology and sexuality” (Bassuk 251). He required the women to receive “vaginal douches and other local gynecological treatments” to prevent any further mental illness from erupting, because of their inferior reproductive organs (Bassuk 251). Mitchell’s goal was to essentially brainwash the women so he could have a clean slate with their minds and convince the women to think in only the way he wanted them to, making him in charge of their body, mind, soul and spirit (Bassuk 247). However, he wanted the women to maintain “control” over their bodies. He achieved this by giving the women a strictly milk diet, to help them gain weight, and they would receive a muscle stimulating massage about once a week to ensure they did not lose their strength while on bed rest (Bassuk 250).

Towards the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John’s wife openly admits to her illness and is under the impression that John is the one that is in denial and belittling the seriousness of her condition. Meanwhile, John is doing his best attempt to treat his wife by imposing the rest cure himself, whether she is aware of it or not. It is clear where his motivation and thought process is coming from, because he directly mentions Weir Mitchell and threatens to send his wife to him if she does not begin to show improvement soon with his treatments (Gilman 303). But his version of the rest cure was just enough different that it allowed his wife to explore the outside garden and to explore all the different thoughts that were occurring in her head, specifically about the wallpaper. She allowed herself to do things that Mitchell said weaken the woman’s mind and thin the barriers of emotions. He specifically wanted his patients to fight any urge to cry, to regain control over their emotions (Bassuk 249). She would directly violate this point by crying “at nothing”, but only when John was not around. And she would allow herself to think deeply about the wallpaper, but only against John’s knowledge. And by doing this it allowed her to continue digging deeper into the pattern of the wallpaper without John or Mitchell’s methods getting in the way. 

The woman’s opinion of the wallpaper changes drastically from the beginning of the text to the end. At first she has a hatred for the wallpaper for reasons she makes very obvious, “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange-in some places, a sickly Sulphur tint in others” (Gilman 301). The smudges and stains of the wallpaper tell the stories of its previous inhabitants.  The shoulder height smudge that circles all the way around the room provokes pacing and allowing the mind to wander astray. And a wondering mind is a dangerous thing, especially for the mentally ill. Mitchell and John both did their best to keep their patients from having their own individual thoughts, but there is no way they could know for sure what was happening inside of their heads.

She ends up spending so much time trapped in the yellow room, that she comes to realize there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper, much like herself. She eventually rips off almost all of the paper off the walls to let the woman free from her prison. Whether or not she was trying to free herself from the mental prison her husband is shoving her in, or if she is trying to free this figurative woman that is trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper is unclear. However, it could very well be both. This is primarily where her husband has failed her miserably with his interpretation of the rest cure. Mitchell did not allow his patients to have their own thoughts because he knew the mind controlled the body; therefore, he did not allow their minds to roam free because this allows them to maintain the same mental state that his is trying to drain out of them. But John’s wife was stubborn, she did not sleep when he told her to rest, she wrote despite him instructing her not to, and she had her own thoughts that encouraged her imagination to reach things beyond any normal, healthy mind. Once she began to embody herself in the pattern of the wallpaper is when she lost all sense of control over mind, which also prevented her husband from having any sort of power over her. She let the creepy, senile woman that had been trapped, for so long, free. The husband’s lenient version of the rest cure ended up leading his wife to lose her mind, he was blinded by the theory that a healthy body means a healthy mind.

At the time the rest cure was seen to be a great advance in the direction of curing mental illnesses. But for many reasons, one example being portrayed in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the rest cure was a short lived treatment that was quickly overshadowed by the idea of using physical activity to cure an ill mind, instead of bed rest (Sharp 796). However, if physical activity is imposed too aggressively it is seen to give the same results as the rest cure (Sharp 796). The extremes of either are more harmful than helpful (Sharp 796). Since Mitchell’s time many experiments have taken place to prove the correct balance of exercise and rest is what produces the ultimate goal of a healthy mind and healthy body. 

The rest cure is argumentatively another way for men to reinforce their superiority over women. Mitchell practiced biological determinism on his patients by brainwashing them into acting completely submissive towards him, other doctors and eventually their husbands. He forced the women to subdue their emotions. In today’s time people are continuing to fight for gender equality, and the rest cure can be used as one more piece of evidence from the past, of a man’s attempt to gain control over women. 
