
The mishandling of women’s mental health is, has, and will be a prevalent part of America’s story. It has been observed, noted and ignored by the presence of the overbearing, male gender roles that have been followed since sex roles were implemented into society. Infamous scientists such as Sigmund Freud were even associated with the malpractice of women patients. Hundreds of tests have been conducted under his practice looking at the unconscious cognitive behavior of the ice berg model, giving doctors new reasons to diagnose patients with hysteria. Medical history of the past is cringe worthy, horrid, and has been taking place not even two hundred years back. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s autobiography, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the ignorance to adequate women’s mental health care and diagnosis were reflective of the time period which the piece was written in. A compilation of articles and works from the early 1800’s to present day give insight into what living in the that era as a woman with anywhere from minor to severe health issues were treated like.

Gilman utilizes rhetoric throughout her experiences to draw attention to the misconceived notions of how women felt when they were not receiving the aid that they needed. Right as her husband posts her up in an abandoned house during a small bout of post partem depression she uses the recurring phrase, “what is one to do?”. Several times she rambles while narrating her confused and isolated feelings because her husband will not listen to her. She trembles, “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?...If a high standing physician, and one’s own husband, assures there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression…what is one to do?... Personally, I believe that congenial work would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman 299-300). The power of the rhetoric elicits her internal struggle and creates for a more dramatic draw on her emotional state from not being understood. Gilman starts her journal by looking at the view of her opposing side, as any respectable speaker would do. She expresses her love for her husband and acknowledges his accomplishments as the big time medical physician out of respect. Similar to the way that Stokely Carmichael addresses his entirely unwilling to listen crowd of white folks while he delivers his famous, “Black Power” speech. He first eloquently articulates and thoroughly acknowledges the Caucasian race and all that it has accomplished within in the country before diving into his strenuous, fired up reasoning as to why he should be listened to, as Gilman progresses and finishes with her toned down rendition opinion (to that of Carmichaels). In both situations, Gilman and Carmichael are being oppressed by their societal “norms”, his being race, and hers being gender, both living in male and white dominated communities. In Carmichaels speech, he explains what it is like to be a black man in a white man’s world, what his intricate thoughts are on racism, white supremacy and what the Black Panthers and community are striving for. At the end of his speech, he reiterates how the movements struggle for equality is a psychological battle in the sense of being able to have the right to define their own terms and live how they see it fit. He ends by saying, “Move over, or we’re goin’ to move over on you” (326). The psychological fight correlates to Gilman’s struggle to vocalize how she feels inside, she kept a journal and had no outlet except fixating on the wallpaper in her room, leading her to insanity where Carmichael speaks his word, with the push for violence with no positive effects. The both are oppressed and searching for a way to be heard by their families, the community and society to change how the system works for people that deserve the right to be heard.

Jane Eyre is a novel told as an autobiography of a 19th century woman challenging the conceptions of acceptable female roles and behavior by thriving through insurmountable adversities within her lifetime. The author Charlotte Bronte was a heroic writer in a grand time during her era for women’s literature, challenging society, and challenging prominent, egotistical male figures. Her book was written in 1847, decades before “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written, perhaps it paved the way for Charlotte Gilman to be comfortable enough to publish her journals. The resemblance of Jane Eyre’s character Bertha to Gilman’s experience is reflective of her own life and speaks volume to the mind set of mental illnesses of society in that generation. The character of Jane starts off as an orphan growing up in an abusive home, years later she starts working for an empowered man name Rochester, who turns out to have this wife, Bertha, who like Gilman gets locked up in the attic of a house because of a misdiagnosed and misunderstood mental illness. The spooky parallels between the two near autobiographies elicit the behind the scenes neglect that was seen in the hundreds of years that preceded us. Jane was exposed to her boss’s wife crawling on her hands and knees around the room where her husband had deemed her insane and left her to rot. Gilman starts off with a case of postpartum depression that escalates into full insanity because of the lack of proper care from her physician who also happens to be her beloved husband. The slow demise of her mind as her journals progress is eye opening and heartbreaking. The use of first person, brings the horrors two steps closer to the reader opposed to if it were being told as a story.  It as if she blames herself for her illness because she wants to get better, but in no way does the fault fall on her, which frames Gilman that much more of a character to sympathize with.

An article from the American Psychological Association looks at elder abuse and neglect as a whole both in and out of nursing homes. Studies have shown that as many as 95 percent of nursing homes may be understaffed, leading to high rates of abuse, since women have a longer life expectancy than men, women are almost twice as likely to reside in a nursing home (3). Thus one can conclude that those factors contribute to the higher numbers of elderly women that suffer neglect and abuse in nursing homes. Abuse comes in many forms such as sexual abuse, financial abuse, verbal, emotional or psychological, physical, and caregiver neglect. One case that was looked at is about a 70-year-old woman who suffers from congestive heart failure, she starts out in the care of her family, and is content with the day to day care but soon after starts getting her requests ignored. Her family turns cold and starts treating her as the house pet. She has no outlet to talk to another person other than her caregivers and becomes too afraid to confront her family of the abuse. This resonates as very similar to Charlottes situation which ends in her simple postpartum depression turning into clinical insanity because of the lack of care from family caregivers. This article focuses on the care of elderly whereas Gilman is a middle aged mother, but the treatment is indifferent. At any age, women are put into the care of families because one thinks family knows best, but the reality is that no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors and with today’s medicine and technology that is readily available to most of the population, abuse of the ill should not still be in existence. The article touches on what possible solutions can be applied for these patients and bystanders around that do not have an outreach. Education is largely pushed, education and media coverage of abuse in nursing homes being made public is a sufficient way to gain support. Once the public knows and is aware of mistreatment, it makes it harder for most to ignore, although not everything that is reported on gets acted on because days go on and other stories surpass the news of just days earlier. After “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was published, a couple years later it made its way to the media and raised a lot of questions in the medical field, but was dismissed over time with the more than dominated, male run society that deemed it nonfiction and inaccurate. For every case of elder abuse and neglect reported to authorities, experts estimate as many as 23 cases go undetected (1). The real problem here is that the same ignorance that took place in the 1800’s is still happening over a hundred years later from when this was written just four years ago. Physicians and the medical field have come tenfold since the 19th century but nursing homes are still grotesquely understaffed and mismanaged, where experiences like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s are still very real, but now transformed into a different setting.

Wendy Wallace looks at women’s mental health in Victorian asylums in her article “Sent to the Asylum.” Patients were admitted into these madhouses in the 19th century with illness’s like infidelity, postpartum depression, alcoholism, hysteria, senile dementia, depression and overwork. A well-known asylum, Bethelem Psychiatric Hospital had doctors that used photography to help diagnose patient’s illnesses. A collection of photographic records was found decades later to be discovered that influential doctors of the day thought capturing a woman’s face as they were admitted into the asylum would express the height of their mental inhabitance and shed light on why or what was going on with their minds. Both private houses and institutions were prevalent during the era, a place to get rid of embarrassing cousins, a place to find a fix for distressed and “useless” housewives, and during the day, a perfectly societal practice deemed seemingly effective. Although no men’s studies are conducted or heard of where ones overbearing wives are locking up their husbands to a madhouse, or are being exiled to the attic of an abandoned house because they are overworked from their nine to five jobs. Not until the 1900’s did writings like, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” finally gets a rise out of the public and media.  The inequality and disrespectful balance of importance seen given to men over women was horrifying. To think that if one were to have a baby and have post-partum depression which today the cure would be therapy, with some possible meds, but in Gilman’s case was to be thrown into isolation, on a rest cure and ignored to the point of sanity. The compilation of experiences that were collected, known of decades ago, and unacted upon are merely glanced over in the bigger scheme of things in the scene of historical events yes, but to think of the women who were not given a fighting chance because of lack of educated men in the workplace is a reason to get an education and not let history repeat itself.

Newspapers might be a dying industry and journalists with modern day social media all around them may be less of a necessity, but nurses, physicians and doctors will never have a scarcity of demand. The medical field and technology will always be improving, innovating and bringing new cures and treatments to ever-growing diseases with today’s poor health. Lobotomies were still legal less than a hundred years ago, and mental health was immensely misunderstood. As long as the world keeps writing, and reading, there is no limit to what women in the roles of today’s society can see to be achieved. Women in the 21st century are climbing the ranks more than ever seen before, as of recent we had a Presidential candidate voted by the people to be fit to run the country of the United States of America. A long way from the stereotypical housewife, but women still have ground to cover. Women are strong. Women are present, and we as women will work to not be mistreated because of the gender of our identities. Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” accurately depicts the mental health community of the 19thcentury and with knowledge and education, the past cannot afford to repeat itself.
