In “The Yellow Wallpaper” readers get a true visual of how woman were treated in the nineteenth century for their mental illness or in this case postpartum distress. In this short story, by Charlotte Gilman, the narrator was robbed of her self-expression of creativity and intelligence. A woman destroyed by her unfulfilled desire for self-expression. Many men have placed themselves higher than the female population. Many have the impression that women are balls of emotion and motherhood bundled together. “The Yellow Wallpaper” displays a visual of how women were treated and how men “dominated” society.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is sharing her experience after child birth. While in the beginning it seems as if the narrator is left alone in an unhappy marriage because she feels misunderstood by her husband, it soon becomes obvious the narrator isn’t mentally stable. She soon starts to hallucinate about the wallpaper, telling stories and smelling it in the air. This woman was confined in a room, for what we now know is called postpartum distress. In the past years, the medical field has exceled phenomenally. Research and new age technology have allowed us to expand our knowledge tremendously. In doing so, researchers gained a better understanding of mental disorders.

During the 19th century, women who revealed their symptoms of postpartum distress were often diagnosed as “neurotic”. Women who didn’t cope well to motherhood were sent away from home to stay in what society and doctors saw as rehabilitation homes. Women who received “help” for this were often placed in asylums or homes that often stood alone for miles. The reason for isolating these women was because of a cure called the Rest Cure. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator described her husband, John, also her doctor, to be a “high standing” physician. They didn’t believe she was sick at all. “if a physician in high standing, one’s own husband, assures that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do” (page 300). Her perception of her own mental state was dumbed down to simply being nervous and acting out due to her trust in the “men” in her life. 

Silas Weir, believed in the Rest Cure because he thought depression was cause by too much mental activity. The Rest Cure is being mentally inactive, which means no writing, working, etc. Weir believed this would cure women, but it only made them worse. The lack of exercising the brain only does more damage. The brain is a muscle and like any other muscle it needs to be stretched to become stronger. Mental illness cannot be treated with isolation, counseling and medicine can help it. Medicine to use to treat mental illnesses have recently been available. During the nineteenth century, such medicine didn’t exist. Science was primitive, it was weak, it had no knowledge of any effective way to treat postpartum distress. Therapy was an option for these women but doctors and society saw them as neurotic and unstable and they didn’t know how to handle women like that. So, they thought isolation was the problem when it only made the situation worse. 

Nowadays, doctors know more effective ways to treat patients with mental illnesses. An initial strategy to help someone is counseling. Talking through one’s problems can help them realize what’s making them feel a certain way and it can also bring closure. Increasingly people are being cured now because of different ways of therapy and advances in medication. Medication goes a long way to help depression which a part of postpartum distress. As far as childbirth is concerned, some studies found evidence of a significant relationship between type of delivery, the mother’s subjective evaluation, and postpartum depression. 

At the time when mothers didn’t get to care for their children, this would already cause a new mother distress. To not have access to the infant you carried and not know where they are or how their wellbeing is, is scary. Many things can affect a mother’s mood after child birth. Being poor or belonging to a low economic class, having a caesarean section, or having a disappointing birth experience can mean different things in different cultural and social context. A mother’s expectations may not be fulfilled during pregnancy so it leads to them being in distress. Studying these differences in results could be useful for a better understanding of a mothers’ mental distress. Motherhood is structured by women from the beginning and to stop it means it will prevent the men from moving forward and growing as a community. 
