“The Yellow Wallpaper” is taken place during the Victorian era and shows the evolution of a women’s struggle with mental illness. The narrator faces her fight a battle between her mind and her body, while the whole time her husband is dismissive and brushes her off. During the Victorian era, everyone subconsciously followed strictly defined gender roles, clearly expressed throughout the story. The resting cure, featured in the story, was created by a man to “cure” women struggling with hysteria and depression by prohibiting any contact of intellectual growth, making it easier to be controlled. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” argues that the Victorian era gender roles impacted the treatment of mental health. This is important because women’s mental health diagnoses were determined male values instead of biological evidence, leading to toxic results.

It was believed that a women’s place was in the home, since “their emotionalism made them unfit for public life” (Hunt). When the narrator describes her husband’s sister, she says that she is “a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession” (Gilman). This quote alone summarizes the goal for a woman to peruse. The way the narrator idolizes her husband’s sister, shows that the gender norms for women were not just enforced by men, but were a standard that was accepted by the entire society. It was highly emphasized for the women to keep their family values as top priority, but there is a twist of irony in The Yellow Wallpaper because the narrator was separated from her child, creating a feeling of failure as a mother and wife. The Yellow Wallpaper shows the effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance to prevent their full development as a person. When John refers to the narrator as a child, it symbolizes the way a child is viewed form an authoritative figure: someone who cannot make decisions by themselves and are dependent to the authoritative figure. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was submissive to her husband and thinks he is always right. It is almost appearing as a brainwash effect. She says it is so hard to talk to John sometimes because “he is so wise, and because he loves me so” (Gilman). She is implying that she has a harder time talking to her husband because he is at a higher level intellectually than she is. Women today are still viewed as less than man, which is why this piece of work is still relevant.

Silas Weir Mitchell came up with the idea of the rest cure, in the late 1800s to be used as a treatment to nervous illnesses, such as hysteria or neurasthenia. It was very popular in the United States and the United Kingdom. There were many mixed review about the resting cure. For some, it helped keep patients alive and away from mental institutions, but, for others, it did more harm than good. The cure itself would last around six to eight weeks. The patients would be kept isolated from all people, forced to stay in bed, and given a fatty-based diet. Many patients were treated like infants and were not allowed to talk, read, write, or sew.  The resting cure forces the patient to completely refuse their mind to exercise or engage in anyway. The idea behind the rest cure was to separate the patients from anything causing this disease and boost the patient’s physical state. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is put into a room that similarly represented a room for a patient in a mental hospital. She was isolated from her newly born child and wasn’t allowed to express herself in anyway, except for in a secret journal which was the story’s perspective was written from. “The Yellow Wallpaper” show how depression and anxiety can prey and, eventually, self-destruct when forced to be sedimentary. During the process, the narrator says “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time” (Gilman).  She never mentioned the fatty-based diet, but reflecting on the steps to recovery, it isn’t the most crucial steps. The story did refer to the narrator’s physical deformation, which was an effect from the diet. The narrator focused on the impact of resting cure on her mental health, rather than the resting cure itself. In an article written by Michael Blackie, Gilman was criticized for her portrayal of the resting cure was overexaggerated and avoided the fact that the resting cure actually helped multiple women. Even though the cure might have helped some women, Gilman wrote from personal experience, so she has ethos backing her piece. Also, the resting cure was created by a male and the personal who is critiquing Charlotte Perkins Gillman is also a male, so it makes me questions his motives when writing the article. 

Before there was a cure, there was a diagnosis. Hysteria was defined in a British Medical Journal as a “morbid state in the nervous system” (Slater). This disorder was found more common in women than men because men were not usually as emotionally expressive as women. Many different doctors diagnose it in different ways because it changes case by case. Some people “lose bodily function” (Slater), others suffer from loss of memory or schizophrenia type symptoms. In the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is seen to be “[creeping] smoothly on the floor” (Gilman) over and around her husband. This could be used as an example of loss of bodily functions. She also shows schizophrenic tendencies when she saw “the faint figure behind [shake] the pattern” (Gilman).  It is very difficult to truly diagnose hysteria because it’s “symptoms” overlap with other psychological and physiological disorders and diseases. The narrator was obviously struggling, but it is hard to tell if it was actually hysteria or something else.

John is depicted as a caring husband and physician, implying that he knew what he was doing. However, despite his good intentions, he was constricted to a particular gender role in society, limiting he ability to help prevent his wife form slipping into insanity by downplaying her disease. Men today, down play women’s emotions to make themselves look level headed, creating a stigma that women can’t be taken seriously if they are emotional. By the later nineteenth century, the medical field was taken over by man and this caused a big uproar from feminists at the time. Women felt like they could get right medical advice for their intimate biological problems because it broke the idea of modesty and decency. This lead a lot of women to unnecessary sufferings and even death. The narrator’s brother was “also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing” (Gilman). The men in the narrator’s life dictated how she lived with her mental illness. John’s assumption of his own superior knowledge led him to misjudge and patronize his wife, in the idea of “helping”.  When she was going through the rest cure, she wasn’t feeling better, but she was scared to tell John because he “would think it absurd” (Gilman). He thought that she was overreacting and when she was put in a room by herself, it was his way of getting rid of the problem. He didn’t have to deal with her anymore, which was a convenient solution, but hunted him in the end.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts how life was like during the Victorian era for a victim of mental illness, with help from personal experience. She was able to take inspirations from the corrupted mental health treatments happening at the time and how men were the doctors behind it.  However, Gilman overexaggerates certain parts and portrayed a literary representation to ensure its success in the public eye. Although the way people respond to mental illnesses has changed, women are still trying to fight against the traditional gender stereotype and expectations.
