Imagine being strictly bound to your bed inside a dull, quiet room that you remain in all day, without being able to read, write, or sometimes even talk. It sounds more like solitary confinement than a psychological treatment doesn’t it? What if I were to tell you that primarily women were given this appalling treatment and men with the same exact condition were told to do the complete opposite? This seems absurd to us today, however this is what physician Silas Weir Mitchell would prescribe to his patients with anxiety and nervousness. The cultural and patriarchal oppression of women in the late 1800’s, was revealed in Mitchell’s Rest Cure by Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. She exposes the unfair treatment of women’s mental health by showing her character’s gradual path towards insanity as her creativity and independence are taken away. 

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gillman is based off of Gilman’s personal experience, which exemplified the type of therapy given to women with similar psychological disorders during that time. This unique form of treatment Gilman and her character experienced is called the Rest Cure. According to the American Psychological Association’s writer, Anne Stiles, the purpose of this cure was to help women suffering from Neurasthenia by prescribing a period of inactivity, to ultimately attempt to repair one’s physical and mental condition. Although this may seem as if it would be a useful treatment, the article Nineteenth Century Patriarchy in Charlotte Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper” puts the Rest Cure in another perspective.

“As part of her treatment, the woman is not allowed to engage in society, as she must always rest. Because she is unable to participate in society, she is bound to both creative and physical confinement. Not only is she bound to her room physically by the bars that are on the windows but also the bed is bolted to the floor. In addition to the physical confinements, she is also unable to engage in creative or intellectual conversation.” (Brooke Vandermoss)

 Not surprisingly numerous patients did not benefit from the Rest Cure and in some cases, were driven insane due to the deficiency of physical and creative activity.  

Contrarily, the approach that was used to treat men with the same illness is called the West Cure. While the Rest Cure may seem more like a punishment than a cure, the West Cure basically was a vacation away from men’s stressful jobs and urban lifestyles. (Anne Stiles 2012) An advertisement for this treatment plan would have probably looked very similar to this: Attention all nervous and anxious men; enjoy an all-inclusive trip to the western frontier to partake in fun activities including cattle roping, roughriding, hunting, and male bonding. The West Cure will guarantee to restore your mind back to health. Theodore Roosevelt and Walt Whitman are among many of the successful men to be rehabilitated by the West Cure. (Stiles) The rest cure was significantly less successful, and in many cases like Gilman’s, turned out to be more detrimental than beneficial. 

In the late 1800’s, scientists and physicians like Silas Weir Mitchell considered men and women to be biologically dissimilar and believed there was a justification to give remarkably different treatments for the same mental illness: neurasthenia. (Stiles) Women were predominantly domestic house wives and were not encouraged to pursue an education and career which resulted in, men serving as the vast majority of the working class, including doctors and physicians. Mitchell believed that the resistance of the female gender role was the root of what caused women to become depressed and anxious. (Stiles) Therefore, men and women were cared for much differently during this time period. This was the leading cause to why the form of treatment that was prescribed, was solely determined by gender. Men were given different types of therapy that allowed them to be active and recover in a more traditional fashion. Men were sent to partake in extended periods of outdoor physical activities on the western frontier. However, women, such as Gilman’s narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, were prescribed a period of enforced bed rest and isolation without being able to make creative or rational decisions. Gilman portrays the patriarchy and oppression towards women by showing how the Rest Cure deprived the narrator of her intellectual and physical freedom. She is ultimately driven insane by the control of her husband and society. 

In this time period, patriarchy and male sovereignty was traditional and a part of the culture of the United States which became an underlying cause to women’s depression. Men worked long and hard hours, while women mostly stayed at home and took care of the house and kids. Women were not shown the same level of respect or importance and as a result, became more frequently depressed and anxious. Little girl’s dreams of becoming a doctor or lawyer were interchanged with the reality of a life indoors, taking care of her family. Women would often wonder what more they could be doing with their lives and fall into depression. Male doctors concluded that they were sick and required treatment that would provide them with an abundance of rest and inactivity to discourage women from pursuing professions. (Stiles) It was also a common belief that women were significantly more likely to become insane then men. This shows how society and traditional medicine oppressed women in the late 1800’s.

 Furthermore, “The Yellow Wallpaper” advocates how patriarchy also lead towards oppressing women. “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith.” (Gilman 76) Because of how the narrator’s husband is a very practical person, he has a difficult time understanding his wife’s creative way of thinking. He prohibits her form writing down her thoughts which eradicate her imaginative voice and he does not realize that she has a myriad of emotions bottled up inside, slowly driving her insane. John believes that because his wife is ill she should not satisfy her imagination and shall remain in her room to allow her mind to recover. (Vandermoss) When the narrator reveals that she does not like her wallpaper and would prefer to move to the “pretty” room downstairs, John says, “nothing was worse for nervous person than to give way to such fancies” (Gilman 78) He does not want to promote her imagination and allow his wife to comply to her fancies because this way of thinking is impractical in his prospective. (Vandermoss) The controlling authority John has over his wife demonstrates how patriarchal oppression was a major barrier for the suffrage movement to overcome. 

As stated in the University of Virginia’s, “The Neurasthenia Rest Cure and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell,” after the publishing of The Yellow Wallpaper during the women’s rights movement, Mitchell’s reputation plummeted because of how Charlotte Perkins Gilman condemned the rest cure in her writing. Mitchell’s practice was short-lived due to the increasingly large amount of publicity towards Gilman’s writings. This was a major advancement for women’s mental health and saved future women from the potential boredom induced madness. She essentially criticized how Men and Women were getting different treatments that were not morally right and how the doctors were plotting to transform depressed women back into being housewives. Gilman chose to illustrate how the Rest Cure was unsuccessful in her writing because it was unsuccessful for her. She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” based off historical analysis of women’s oppression in medicine and society and her own firsthand experience of insanity caused by the Rest Cure. 
