By looking at, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in terms of the rest cure, individuals can see that this treatment belittled women and in some cases made them even sicker. The rest cure was a treatment invented by S. Weir Mitchell and described in his novel, Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them. The treatment was exclusively intended for women whom he described as, “nervous women, who, as a rule, are thin and lack blood” (9). The rest cure was very systematic. Mitchell wanted an atmosphere of order and control for the patients, leaving them absolutely no room for freedom. The treatment instructed the patient to lay in bed all day, for months at a time, with the assistance of a doctor or nurse feeding the patient and keeping them from thinking negative thoughts. The patient was banned from seeing any friends or family, because it was thought to alter the thoughts of the patient. Depending on the weight of the patient, certain dietary restrictions were put in place. The rest cure was administered to women thought to have hysteria or other mental illnesses that applied to mainly women. For some, the treatment actually helped, but for others, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it seemed to only make them sicker.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a novel that showed the rest cure in action. The female narrator thought that her husband, who was a physician, was taking her to, “a colonial mansion” for the summer on vacation. She then tells readers that she is suffering from, “nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (300). Her husband thinks that it is only right for her to be isolated from other people and stay in the room and rest all day. He gets this idea from the one and only, S. Weir Mitchell. She thinks that this isn’t the best thing for her, and thinks that occasional exercise and freedom would improve her mental health condition. The female narrator thinks that by not communicating with anyone and being locked away all alone, she has no way to, speak what she feels. But of course she never says anything to her husbands. So, the narrator begins to keep a journal expressing her thoughts. She knows that if her husband found the journal she’d be in a lot of trouble. The narrator begins to become obsessed with the wallpaper in her room. She is constantly focusing on the pattern and as her obsession grows she starts to see that the wallpaper resembles a woman trying to escape. She begins to tear off the wallpaper one night. The next day she went into a full fledge breakdown where she bit and tore off the remainder of the wallpaper. The narrator goes so psychotic that she thinks that she is the woman trapped in the wallpaper. The story ends with the husband walking into the room and when he sees what his wife has done, and he faints. 

The rest cure was obviously used to the female narrator in, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” “To understand how Victorian doctors and patients rationalized the widespread use of the rest cure, one must explore underlying medical, cultural, and social assumptions about women” (Bassuk 245). At the time women were perceived by society to be secondary to men. They also were thought to be more susceptible to mental illnesses like hysteria and depression. If a man told a woman that she was crazy, then that must mean she was crazy. There was no point of even trying to argue. This shows the medical and the social aspects of the time when Mitchell designed the rest cure. In the eyes of Mitchell, this treatment seemed to be the best solution. He thought that he could just stop women from being “sick” by isolating them from the the things and the caused them to become “sick.” Although this may have sounded logical to him, Gilman, who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” had a nervous breakdown under Mitchell’s rest cure, and wrote an article, “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” She tells readers that for three whole months she tried Mitchell’s rest cure in a mission to fix her marriage. She “Came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.” In the time she was under the rest cure she had a nervous breakdown. She later gave credit to herself for getting out of a toxic and controlling relationship. She also applauded herself for not following into the wrath of Mitchell’s smothering treatment. Although she wrote, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” as a stab at her husband she also wrote it to demonstrate to Mitchell, and to others who may use this method, how close she was to actually going crazy. As Martin said in her article, The Rest Cure Revisited, “Gilman’s short story highlighted the rest cure as a symbol of the paternalistic nature of 19th-century medicine and the suppression of female creativity. Yet reading the careful instructions and closely observed case studies of the physicians using this new therapy, one is touched by their enthusiasm.” (737) Gilman showed how that although some may find the rest cure beneficial it’s not something that every woman may benefit from. For her, she was too creative and opinionated to be isolated and told what to do. 

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we see the rest cure through the way that the husband/physician treats the female narrator. In the beginning of the story, she tells the readers that her husband has gotten them a vacation house for the summer, seems pretty normal right? Until she begins describing the place. First she says that the house has, “Been empty for years.” (300) She then tells readers that, “The windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (301). The narrator almost makes it sound like she is in an asylum of some sort. She keeps going back to how good her husband John treats her, and how she is so grateful that he is taking care of her. She says that she has, “a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.” (301). This is definitely not normal. Her husband frequently reminds her that her exercise and food solely depend on how strong she is feeling each day. The narrator portrays how she feels that she is such a burden on her husband, and all she wants to do is help. She expresses how she constantly feels like she is troubling him and how it makes her feel bad about herself. This goes back to connect with the social assumptions of the Victorian age. Not only did her husband feel like she wasn’t good enough, neither did she. She felt like she was the problem and a burden on HIM. The narrator tells us how she has visitors. Her husband’s family comes to the estate for the fourth of July. This was interesting, considering in Mitchell’s rest cure treatment, the patients were not supposed to have any kind of interaction with other people. She tells readers how exhausted she is. After the family visiting she expresses to John how tired she is, and he threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, the inventor of the rest cure, in the fall. This proves that the husband was indeed using the rest cure to help treat his wife. She tries to talk to her husband about how the estate isn’t benefiting her but he just turns it around and says that she can’t let those thoughts possess her head. This is when she begins to go crazy. 

By looking at the effect of the rest cure in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” readers can see that not only does it affect women’s mental health, it also makes them feel like they are lesser than men.  During the Victorian era, society believed that women were more likely to develop mental illness and this is represented through Gilman’s work. From personal experience, she created a piece that shinned light on a situation that not many people were taking seriously at the time. As Martin says in The Rest Cure Revisited, “In the confrontation between S. Weir Mitchell and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one can see a 19th-century microcosm of the tension between beneficence and autonomy. This tension persists in psychiatry today.” (737) Both Gilman and Mitchell changed the way that people view women and mental health to this day.
