
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 fictional piece with biographical elements, “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 willing to listen, middle class, crowd of white UC Berkeley students 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. Carmichael keeps hammering at the importance of the lack of the country’s refusal to yield one inch to opportunism with a rhythmic rhetoric. 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. Bertha directly connects to what the end stages that Gilman was described to experience, everything from being kept on the third floor to nearly reaching full insanity locked away to focus on the inner thoughts of her mind for sake of being cured. The spooky parallels between the two pieces of literature 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.

Violence against women is increasingly recognized as a health issue in nearly every country in the world. Gilman’s homemade cure for postpartum depression is one hundred percent a form of mental and domestic partner abuse from her husband. The parallel between that and looking at the health outcomes of intimate partner violence (IPV) is very prominent. A study from a compilation of doctors looks at IPV in ten different countries. What Gilman writes about is the dynamic between her and her husband and how she is forced to suppress her thoughts and feelings because she feels threatened in her existing relationship. To sample the results, it was found that Bangladesh leads in number of physical violence reports at 71 percent, followed by 52 in Bolivia and 45 percent in Zambia (IPV).  The younger the married couple, the more vulnerable they are to abuse, in Bolivia, a lower amount of abuses were reported for those of the women that did not work and were stay at home moms. The correlation between men’s use of alcohol the abuse of their wives was statistically significant in eight of the ten countries. Also, very interesting was the statistic that women who are responsible for making their health care decisions jointly with their husbands was significantly lower in several countries versus those who made them solely on their own. Ironically Gilman’s joint medical decisions with her husband was what led to the demise of her mental health. Gilman’s literature was written in the 1800’s and this study took place not even a decade ago looking at ten various developing countries. The shocking similarities between developing countries now and how marital couples were treated over a hundred years ago shows the lack of progress and steps the world has taken on domestic violence and how to prevent it. Nearly half of all women and men in the United States will experience psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime, a staggering statistic to be found true just six years ago in 2010. Gilman underwent significant psychological abuse from the person she trusted most in the world, meaning if women cannot feel confident in their ability to be in a safe place of home, and intimate partner violence is still very prevalent today where does that leave the suffering women in today’s even more unwelcoming and condescending society. South Carolina alone leads as the number 2 ranked state of women being killed by men! (Smith). Intimate partner abuse is not something that will just evaporate overnight but literate such as Gilman’s and eye opening studies taken from around the world, raise awareness for the cause in a multitude of ways.

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 both real and fictional illness’s like infidelity, postpartum depression, alcoholism, hysteria, senile dementia, depression and overwork. A well-known asylum, Saint Mary of Bethelem, nicknamed “Bedlam” due to its horrific treatment of the mentally ill, 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. Sigmund Freud, who is the father of psychology was the creator of psychoanalysis. “The id, the ego, and the superego.” He believed that a patient could be cured of his or her disorder with looking at repressed feelings and thoughts (History Cooperative). 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.
