
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator, a woman living in the Victorian Era, writes in her journal about her experience while she is being treated for a nervous disorder. We find out early on that the narrator has recently had a child but because of her illness she is kept from her child and is being confined to a nursey in a strange home which her husband, a physician, says this treatment will help her get better. She mentions not being able to read, write, socialize, go out, she is supposed to stay home and rest all the time. In this paper, I will explain how research of women during the Victorian Era further explains why the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is treated by isolation and obsesses over the wallpaper. My research includes how the relationship of women and insanity grew during that time, the rationalizations and medicalizations for their insanity and how the rest cure, a very commonly used technique, was used to treat these women. 

To understand why the narrator was isolated in that house and becomes to occupied by the wallpaper, we first need to understand the relationship of women and hysteria in that time. During the 19th century, women were not always viewed as being hysterical. Actually it was the complete opposite. According to Elain Showalter, Author of “Victorian Women and Insanity”, it was actually men who were thought to contract diseases both physical and mental more often than women. Men also outnumbered women in mental asylums. During that time, the wealthier and upper-class citizens were more likely to receive healthcare rather than the poor. It was not until a law was passed that all citizens were to be cared for in the asylums equally, as the industry grew, that women began to dominate the mental patient gender. It did not take long for women to outnumber the men by thousands and their length of stay almost double that of the men. Hysteria and Neurasthenia were considered the “female illnesses” because it was mostly women who had them. It was not uncommon for women to seek extra protection in asylums that contained both sexes. The female patients had to be protected from being raped by men. This led to a rise in single sex asylums, where women only asylums became abundant. Class still played a role though, a poor or middle class women was much more likely to be diagnose insane than a wealthy upper class woman. The number of female patients grew to 91% of all patients in mental health care. With this information we can see that the female gender was generalized as mentally unstable during the nineteenth century.

 Now to understand hysteria during the nineteenth century we need to understand what they thought hysteria was and what caused it. The medical industry did not have the same medical advances and knowledge during the Victorian Era as we do today and that reflects on how doctors and physicians viewed and medicalized inanity back then. Neurologists and gynecologists both had medical conclusions as to what caused women to go insane or suffer from nervousness. One cause of insanity was believed to be malnutrition and starvation of mothers who continued to breastfeed their children because it was cheaper than food. A woman’s weight was seen as a very prominent cause in hysteria. Women in asylums were fed heavy daisy and fatty diets to gain weight. Overweight women were actually admired more in that society rather than thinner women because they were seen as more emotionally and mentally stable and even more intelligent. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is fed constantly and her husband makes the remark that she must be getting better because she is getting heavier. Another factor doctors commonly thought caused hysteria was the female reproductive system. Female menstruation was not understood as being the natural reproductive occurrence that we know of it today. Many doctors did not know why it happened and believed that it was another female disease. If the period was irregular that meant that the disease was getting worse. Many non-gynecologists believed that the central nervous system was the control center for emotional stability in the female body. With this they believed that the female had a more genetically sensitive nervous system and that their nerves reacted to situations and stimuli more than men causing an emotional disorder. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is told that she is not allowed to read or write because those activities are too exciting for her to handle and can worsen her condition. 

Treatment for the female mental illness was about just as advanced as their medical diagnoses. The rest cure developed by S. Weir Mitchell was originally for the treatment of battle fatigue in men, but as hysteria in women began to arise it was mostly used to treat the women. Ellen Bassuk, who wrote “The Rest Cure: Repetition or Resolution of Victorian Women's Conflicts?” explains how the rest cure affected women and whether the treatment worked. The rest cure is a method where a woman gives her doctor complete control over herself and is confined to her bed usually from six weeks to two months. During the treatment the woman is only to have contact with the doctor and staff, they dress and feed her, bath her and even take care of her bathroom needs. The most movement the women were allowed to do was clean their teeth. Bassuk wrote about a young married woman who had dealt with neuralgic illness, worsened after marriage and several pregnancies, she got to the point of being bedridden. After trying the rest cure for just one week she was almost completely cured. This was not the case for all women who tried the rest cure. Even though it did seem to help some women, the majority of women claim to have worsened from the rest cure. Some believed it was the inability off stimuli that worsened some women and that the other women saw improvements in their conditioned when they kept to a busy task such as making clothing and cleaning. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” seems to demonstrate this need for stimulus. She mentions how being confined and staring at the white walls and inability to do anything was making her feel worse. When she moves to the nursery she immediately obsesses over the yellow wallpaper in the room and feels as though she needs to write in her journal. As the story progresses she seems to worsen and become paranoid but at the very end she is satisfied and relieved when she solves the mysterious wallpaper. 

The historical context that is hidden in the story is revealed by further research on women during the Victorian Era. With this new information we know that it was not uncommon for women to be seen as much more mentally unstable than men and more susceptible to hysteria. Today we know what the narrator went through was postpartum depression from recently having a baby but during that time they immediately diagnosed her depression as nervousness blaming her female anatomy and sensitive nervous system. To treat her, her husband administers her the rest cure where she is confined to a room by herself for several weeks with minimal contact with other people. She feels it worsens her and she begins to obsess over wallpaper, which we can understand because of the lack of stimuli in her environment. With this new knowledge of Victorian women, why they were viewed as hysterical and how they were treated, it can be more easily seen why the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is treated by the rest cure and obsesses over the wallpaper.

