
The rest cure, prescribed for women specifically, was a treatment designed during the 19th century by a man named Weir S. Mitchell to help diagnose neurasthenia, more commonly known as a dreadful nervous illness. Women were pressured to live under very harsh rules and conditions while under this treatment; this usually resulted in strict diet, limitations of specific actions such as writing, and minimal face to face interaction and communication. Because of the many practices females had to carry out while under this cure, psychological manipulation played a huge part of the “rest cure”, as seen in Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Perkin’s short story allows us to see how the rest cure was actually put into perspective during earlier times; overtime the narrator begins to grow mentally insane from this cure put on her, not to mention basically being confined to a previous insane asylum. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the rest cure helps to show viewers how psychological manipulation and other factors like emotional stability played out in the story and in the history/culture of this prescribed cure because it portrays to us how over time, people under this cure begin to become unhealthy and unwilling to even reply to simple questions in society. The “rest cure” seems to overtake the human body and put it into a higher supernatural state because all of the basic rights are taken away during this crucial period, clearly resulting in how historical evidence shows how the texts makes this cure sexist, horribly unhealthy, and how the post effects of the cure are not beneficial for the patient whatsoever. 

Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the rest cure seems to hold a recurring concept of sexism; “It became widely used in the US and UK, but was prescribed more often for women than men. It was frequently used to treat anorexia nervosa” (Oppenheim 2). This quote reveals how during the 19th century the rest cure was more commonly used for women who suffered severe mental problems rather than men, which relates back to Gilman’s short story in how he believes this is the only remedy possible for his wife to potentially get well; a cure that takes away herself as a whole, yet if he were to ever be prescribed it as a male, it would be complete foolishness. “He cites his initial use of rest for nervous women as a last resort in his treatment of a woman who had tired out the doctors, and exhausted drug-shops and spas and travel, and outlived a nurse or two” (Poirier 17) shows how Weir S. Mitchell imagined that this cure was the last possible escape for all female society that suffered from nervous illnesses. Weir S. Mitchell created this cure in hopes of future happiness down the road and a bright look upon life, but readers can visibly see how that is completely inaccurate in Gilman’s story; Gilman creates a scenario in which the rest cure is given to the narrator by her husband and she eventually goes insane and unstable instead of the effects Mitchell had planned for. “Inherent in Mitchell’s statements about neurasthenia in women are his assumptions, echoing current religious, social, and even medical beliefs (in studies of brain weight, skull capacity, skull shape), of the physical and emotional interiority of women to men” (Poirier 19) displays that the husband/doctor in Gilman’s story had no consent to prescribe his wife the rest cure because of the inaccuracy and false assumptions of the everyday female that he was unaware of. This brings up a precise point for how this cure should not have been able to be prescribed to any women in society; there is not enough reliable and sufficient information to prove it would have a positive effect on the female, resulting in the sexism of this cure. 

Research leading back to the 1800s on fatty diets, inactiveness, and communication skills while under the rest cure all lead to an appalling unhealthy lifestyle for patients diagnosed. Oppenheim explains the unpleasing restrictions that came along with this cure, “The rest cure usually lasted six to eight weeks. It involved isolation from friends and family. It also enforced bed rest, and nearly constant feeding on a fatty, milk-based diet” (2). While Mitchell created this cure to have lasting benefits of a healthy lifestyle, the complete opposite was done as one can see in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, “I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner-but it hurt my teeth” (Gilman). Here, Gilman explores the drastic point of how this cure makes its patients go mentally insane rather than get well; the isolation makes the patients sicker than they previously were, pertaining to the insufficient remedies of the treatment. Many psychologists and doctors were able to study the history of how patients reacted to this prescribed cure and this is what they found, “The treatment kept some patients alive and others out of asylums, though some patients and doctors considered the cure worse than the disease” (Oppenheim 2). This idea of the cure being more hurtful than the disease proves to be true because in Gilman’s story, the narrator gets so severely caught up in the fact that she believes she is the woman creeping behind the yellow wallpaper that she eventually creeps over her husband, John, after he faints from her insane actions. Historical contexts of the rest cure allow readers to accurately visualize how unhealthy the cure was for its patients which is shown not only in Gilman’s short story, but also in all of Weir’s patients that were diagnosed as well. 

Evidence displayed in past articles describing the rest cure, along with “The Yellow Wallpaper” points out the harmful post effects of the cure and how unbeneficial they are to actually recovering from nervous illnesses. Poirier shows how over time Weir believed his patients would become more willingly active and willing to be social after the treatment had been in place, “The rest I like for them is not at all their notion of rest…When they are bidden to stay in bed a month, and neither to read, write, nor sew…then rest becomes for women a rather bitter medicine, and they are glad enough to accept the order to rise and go about” (23). Gilman’s story proves this concept to be correct of the narrator wanting to socialize with others and have a bubbly personality towards the end of her prescribed treatments, but this concept also proves to be false because the post results are connected with her inner self and conscience than others; the narrator lives in a supernatural world where she has thoughts in her mind that are absurdly crazy. For example, she socializes with herself in her confined room with people behind the wallpaper trying to lure her in and she secretly writes in a journal to herself, but this proves no beneficial effects of the treatment since she gains more insanity of others finding her writings and actions while in an insane mental state. After the treatment had been carried out for a few months, the lasting effects relied heavily on dependency rather than an independent healthy patient, “Patients were force-fed if necessary-effectively reduced to the dependency of an infant. Nurses cleaned and fed them, and turned them over in bed. Doctors used massage and electrotherapy to maintain muscle tone” (Oppenheim 2). Weir’s main goal was for the rest cure to have clear effects for all of its patients and surrounding outsiders to see, but that was not the case, especially in “The Yellow Wallpaper”; the narrator is faced with the effects of believing she cannot escape from her cruel life, and the effects leave her stuck in her own mind, relying heavily on her imaginative world.  

The rest cure, leading all the way back to when it was created in the late 1800s, explores to researchers that it is not nearly as helpful for patients in the long run as doctors would have liked to see. Neurasthenia was the main cause for Weir S. Mitchell to create this cure which withholds a multitude of questions from society; ideas of sexist thoughts, unhealthy lifestyles, and lack of benefiting effects all put the idea in reader’s heads of how effective the cure actually is for its patients. Research from historical context in articles along with Gilman’s short story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” argue that the cure is not all that it is cracked up to be; patients have increasing gone mentally insane when given this treatment because of the solitude it requires being under. Research of rituals and experiments done to and from patients throughout the rest cure process helps to shape how “The Yellow Wallpaper” clearly shows how its patient, the narrator, did in fact go more psychotic instead of the cure of released nervousness. Overall, the rest cure seems to withhold the idea of being overbearingly inaccurate and unbeneficial, clearly resulting in how the narrator in Gilman’s story was indeed not precisely cured. 
