
 The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Gilman, was told in first person point of view by an unnamed woman who lived in an era where her voice was not heard and opinion didn’t matter. Women living in the early 19th century were labeled as people who cook, clean, care for the children and obey the orders of their spouse. The Yellow Wallpaper illustrates how these women were treated for their physical and mental health and how it leads to their insanity. The author is trying to portray the mistreatment of women in the late 1800’s by illustrating how the woman was treated by her husband, the roll the woman played in the story and how both of these things contributed to the woman becoming mentally unstable. 

In the journal entry, Women’s Health Concerns Through the Eyes of a Midlife Feminist, Vicki Meyer Illustrates how women’s health in the 19th century was treated so differently than how it is treated today. The unnamed women in the story played the typical role of a woman in the mid 1800’s. She stayed inside, took care of the children and did anything her husband said to do. Her physician husband, who thought he knew what was best for her, told her in order to get well she must stay in the isolated room and rest. He called it the “rest cure.” The room was old; it had torn wallpaper, barred windows and no communication with the outside world. The room represented the women living in the 19th century. They were broken and blocked off from society. The women in the story kept a journal and wrote in it everyday, but the journal was kept a secret from everyone but her. Keeping the journal a secret, shows that women were genuinely scared to break the rules and disobey their husbands. Writing in this journal was the one place where she could express her true feelings and not be judged. Women were not able to voice their opinion in the mid 1800’s, men were the ones in power, and they voted for our government, they made the rules.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman portrays the narrator's crazy mental state as a way to protest the lack of medical and professional attention that women were given during the 19th century. Women were described as weak and fragile and were not treated right because of the lack of knowledge their physician husbands had on their health. Women in the 19th century were not treated the same as men when it came to health concerns. Men were always the ones that were being conducted for research. Men were always the physicians and women that did purse a carrier in medicine were taught medicine through a male perspective. The way a woman was treated for her illness in the 1800’s is very different from how women are treated today. Meyer points out that women “were getting hysterectomies in an attempt to treat a variety of problems.” When a woman became pregnant, she was sent to a hospital by herself and was not able to have her spouse or anyone else in the room with her. They were tied down and not able to see their babies for up to 24 hours. Today, women’s health has changed so much over time because of the advancements in the health care field as well as advancements in medicine. “Over half of medical school admissions are women and women’s health research has greatly increased.” (Meyer)

In the 1800s, women were treated so poorly and unfair. The lack of medical knowledge that doctors had in the past and how they thought that leaving a woman by herself during childbirth or during puberty was okay to do. In the Yellow Wallpaper, the woman was put in a room and was forced to stay inside and had no contact with others. They thought that keeping her isolated would help heal her. Women that were left to birth a child alone ended up with many complications and medical problems for the rest of their life. Today that number of complications in women’s health has decreased dramatically and that is because the doctors today are more educated in women’s health, and there is a wide variety of medications now available. If the women in the story had been allowed to see her child after birth maybe she would not have gone insane.

In the Yellow Wallpaper, the women was left alone in order to treat her illness, which ultimately lead her going insane and her health getting worse rather than better. This shows the lack of knowledge in the medical field on women in the 19th century, and how the roles the women played in the 19th century contributed to their insanity. If more research were conducted on women, the women in the story would not have been treated the way they were, they may voiced their opinion. If women had more rights and played more rolls rather than keeping to themselves, they would have come out stronger and healthier.
