
The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, wrote much more than a short story about a woman suffering from a psychological disorder in the early 1900’s.  Gilman created a character as an outlet to retell her own personal experience with a “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 300).  With a small amount of background information, the reader is able to pick up on the author’s arguments regarding societal pressures that lead towards mental illness and a form of treatment that only worsened the symptoms of the condition.  After having researched the rest cure and postpartum depression, it can be concluded that the woman’s lack of significance in the eyes of men during this time period and the societal standards they were expected to live up to played a serious role in the psychological disorders that they developed.

It is no secret that, in the early 1900’s, there was much less available research on different disorders, proper treatments and available medications.  However, one of the topics lacking the most information was that of psychological illness.  It was believed that women’s bodies were more susceptible to disease and such “nervous” diseases could onset as easily as from the disruption of one’s environment.  At the time, any disruption of psychological functioning was labeled as nervousness.  Ellen L. Bassuk noted that “although doctors were unable to identify structural defects associated with [these diseases], they nevertheless believed that these ailments involved lesions on the brain cortex” (247).  According to Bassuk, around this time, S. Weir Mitchell developed the famous “rest cure” for women who were showing symptoms of nervousness.  It was used in a variety of cases, most of which would now be diagnosed as some sort of mental illness.  This is the same treatment that is seen in “The Yellow Wallpaper” as prescribed by the narrator’s husband, who is a physician.

This rest cure ended up proving to be incredibly counterproductive in the narrator’s case and caused the ultimate downward spiral of symptoms that the narrator underwent.  From the very beginning of the story, the reader can tell that the narrator was skeptical of the treatment methods her husband was using and how she was frustrated with his inability to see deeper into the symptoms she tried to convey.  As the narrator introduced her husband into the story, she stated “[My husband] is a physician, and perhaps . . . that is one reason I do not get well faster.  You see he does not believe that I am sick!  And what can one do?” (Gilman 299).  In this statement, not only does John, the husband, ignore his wife’s concerns, but the wife, the narrator, also believes that she cannot argue her husband’s opinion.  Because during this time period, women were believed to lack intelligence, even their knowledge of their own bodies was not taken seriously.  This too relates back to the failure of the rest cure; had women been able to speak up about their symptoms and the effects they felt from the treatment, a more productive cure could have been produced.  It is also with this statement that Gilman was able to express her own experience of not being heard and feeling helpless in dealing with a mental disorder.  

According to research, it was not at all uncommon to remain in an unhealthy state or develop more severe symptoms after beginning the rest cure, such as the narrator and the author experienced.  Bassuk states that “many did not recover” (247) and some “became sicker and condemned Mitchell and his treatment” (245).  The “cure” was based off of a regimented schedule that called for the majority of each day to be spent resting and for a special diet to be administered by nurses.  The patient was taught to become completely submissive to the authoritarian male physician that held complete control over her treatment (Bassuk 253).  As “The Yellow Wallpaper” goes on, it becomes abundantly clear to the reader that it was this abundance of rest and separation from anything resembling a normal routine that caused the narrator to become stir-crazy and eventually obsessed with the figures in the wallpaper.

Although it is fairly clear throughout the short story that the nervousness that the narrator is suffering from is actually postpartum depression, it is important to understand why this may have developed and what outside factors could have played a role in the narrator’s illness.  On page 301 and 302, the narrator notes how she loves her baby, but she is grateful for Mary’s help with him because being around the baby makes her more nervous.  The nervousness that the narrator describes in this scene is due to the pressures and expectations that society placed on women during this time.  In the early 1900’s, the woman’s role in the house was to bear and raise children and run a household suitable for her husband; it was expected of them.  However, this was a tremendous and overwhelming pressure for some women to handle (Bessuk 253).  Because women were not expected or allowed to go out and get a job to provide for their families, they did not have any other option to stay home to raise the children.  Ultimately, their success depended solely on their children.  The narrator’s lack of confidence in her ability to properly raise a child to society’s standards resulted in her onset of postpartum depression.

In Cheryl Beck’s research, she stated that the first stage of postpartum depression experienced by mothers is one of “encountering terror” (44) which was defined with symptoms of “horrifying anxiety”, “relentless obsessive thinking” and “the image of enveloping fogginess to describe a loss of concentration” (44).  Following the terror stage, Beck found that mothers went through the “dying of self” stage (44), where they began to lose recognition of their “normal self” and begin to feel as if they were simply going through the motions.  Considering these symptoms and the relationship between the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and her husband, John, the reader can develop and understanding as to why the narrator could not properly express the anxiety and nervousness that she was feeling after having her child to her husband.

As the short story progresses, the reader begins to see just how drastically the narrator is declining.  She starts to describe seeing the figure of a woman hiding behind the wallpaper, which becomes more and more of an obsession for her.  Near the end of the story, in reference to the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator says “Life is very much more exciting for me now than it used to be.  You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch” (Gilman 308).  However, even though the talk of the woman increases, the narrator fails to mention her baby again after saying that it makes her nervous.  This lack of mention of the child, along with the postpartum depression leads the reader to analyze the obsession with the woman in the wallpaper.  This strange woman who creeps all around has no ties or expectations to live up to; she has no husband and no child to take care of.  While the vision of her is a result of the worsening psychological condition, the obsession with her stems from the narrator’s longing to be freed of the societal pressures that she faces.

In conclusion the strict gender roles and intense societal pressures present in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s led to the oppression of women.  The dominating patriarchal society, which believed that women were also inferior to men, led to the rise of “nervous disorders” seen among young women at the time.  The creation of the rest cure was based off of the idea that a woman had to submit to a man and it was this very nature of the “cure” that caused so many women to develop worse symptoms while on this treatment.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a work way more advanced than its years, dives into the societal norms of the time in an effort to create an awareness of the injustices that women faced.
