Since the 19th century, women have continuously fought for equal rights between men and women. While it has improved, today there is still an issue regarding men having more power and rights than women. Currently, men are dominant in sports, the medical and business field, economists and much more. It is rare to find a woman who has more power than a man, and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” emphasizes this issue. During the 19th century, women were trying to peak and become equal with men. Women diagnosed with neurasthenia were placed under Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was Gilman’s secret journal during her treatment of the rest cure. Charlotte Gilman was well-known in the 19th century as a women activist and writer who was placed under the rest cure by her husband. The rest cure was a way to dehumanize women, especially women who were becoming successful in order to prevent them from surpassing the men. It not only affected the mental health of women, but their physical health as well. Women would lose or gain significant amount of weight while under the treatment of the rest cure. Besides the effects of the rest cure, male dominance in the medical field was evident and used it as a way to keep women from gaining power in the medical field and other aspects. Women could not receive the education and experience to hold a position higher than a caretaker, which was soon taken away. Since the 19th century, women have struggled to be equal and have the same opportunities as men. The current issue of women and men not being equal is expressed through Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” as Gilman was being degraded by the male dominance through the rest cure. 

The cure, which was prescribed almost exclusively for women, had three core elements: isolation, rest, and feeding, with electrotherapy and massage added to counteract muscle atrophy (Martin, 2007). In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman was diagnosed with neurasthenia due to her nervousness and depression and placed under Mitchell’s treatment of the rest cure. The rest cure was demeaning to women as it destroyed them physically and emotionally, which was the real purpose behind the rest cure. During this time, women were beginning to gain power and starting to advance in society whether it was in the medical field or in Gilman’s case, a successful writer. Women were placed under this rest cure until their physician, whom were men, decided that they were mentally stable enough to return to their everyday life. One thing Gilman says in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is “John is a physician, and perhaps…perhaps that is one reason I do not get better.” This is important as Gilman hints to her audience that the rest cure is not helping her neurasthenia and he may be doing this to prevent her from continuing her success. The day was punctuated by electrotherapy and massage, sponge baths with a “rough rub” using wet sheets, and frequent feedings. The diet consisted of milk alone for the first week, or, if milk was not tolerated, 18 or more raw eggs per day (Martin, 2007). He kept her isolated from the world, even from her child and John, her husband and physician, would not even spend time with her. By isolating Gilman from the world, she looks into the yellow wallpaper on the wall and begin to hallucinate. She slowly loses her sanity as she thinks that the yellow wallpaper is telling her a story.  

Psychological manipulation was crucial to the rest cure, as Mitchell was well aware (Martin, 2007). This also brings up the argument of Gilman not actually being ill, but being tricked into thinking she was. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman states that she had a nervous problem, but the seriousness of her nervous disorder was up to her husband to decide. Due to his profession, Gilman has no choice but to trust her husband and follow his treatment. Gilman may have never been ill, but had to listen to her husband as he is the culprit behind this treatment and her well-being.  In an article called “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” published in 1913, a year before Mitchell’s death, she recounted how she spent 3 months trying to follow his prescription for “a domestic life” and “came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over” (Martin, 2007). Gilman almost went insane due to this treatment, which is the main reason behind it. The goal of the rest cure was to mentally and physically drain women so they could not continue to be successful, become weak and incapable of growing. 

Currently, men dominate the medical field as most doctors and surgeons are men, while women are most likely found being caretakers and nurses, the people who help the doctors. This was also an issue in the 19th century as it can be seen in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. During the 19th and 20th century, it was rare to find any woman in the medical field especially during the treatment of the rest cure. Women became professional patients. They lost not only their control over the diagnosis of their own illness, but also their control over the prescriptions-literally the scripts-that dictate the setting, dialogue and action appropriate for their bodies (Kautz, 1995). A perfect example of this was Gilman case with her husband. Gilman was not able to self-diagnosed herself along with other women who faced this treatment as well. She did not have a say in her treatment which made her physically and mentally unstable. Women were prevented from becoming powerful in the medical field as they did not have the education nor experience as the men had. They were offend found as caretakers or midwives, but those numbers began to slowly die with the emergence of the rest cure. The power struggle between Gilman and her husband, expressed through the controlling and unwanted prescription, is replicated in the relationship of the women’s friends with their own doctors (Kautz, 1995). The controlling behavior possessed by these men made women fearful of their own doctors, some who they considered close friends or in Gilman’s case, her husband. Men were afraid of women rising to power that they would progress with the rest cure knowing that these women are not sick. These physicians have enough education and knowledge to know when a person is mentally ill versus a woman who is stressed out or going through a rough patch. Men knew that if women were to gain power in medical field, they would gain knowledge of the rest cure and know that it only hurts the woman patients rather than helping them. Gilman wrote a few works after her treatment with the rest cure and each work had a male figure in the medical field who had control over everything including his patients, as a way to convert back to her experience with her husband and Weir Mitchell. 

Through the rest cure, it was evitable that physicians did not care for their patients and wanted to keep them isolated from the world. There are multiple reference within “The Yellow Wallpaper” about John’s behavior towards his wife. She makes references about him laughing at her and him losing his patience with her. Perhaps the reason he was losing his patience was because Gilman was strong and not letting the rest cure get to her. She also states in her journal that her husband threatened to send her to Weir Mitchell if she did not improve or behave. These threatening comments from John to Gilman is just one example of how they continue to degrade women. Perhaps Charlotte Perkins Gilman, despite being vigorous and good-looking, sensed this hostile side of Mitchell, or perhaps her personality triggered it. If so, she was an exception. Most of the time, his “moral methods” were facilitated by his personal charisma (Martin, 2007). Rather than giving her proper treatment, Mitchell isolates her from the world and leaves her alone in a room as if it is up to her to get better. 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 (Martin, 2007). 

Mentally, isolation and the constant “rest” was unhealthy and destroyed them emotionally. These women would have to sit in a room and just listen to their imagination as it slowly became hallucinations, which drew them insane. Physically, the diet was not healthy and caused terrible weight gain. A typical Rest Cure diet consisted of porridge and cream, fish or bacon, toast, tea, coffee and cocoa for breakfast; fish, cutlets, or milky pudding for lunch; soup, fish, joint, and sweets for dinner (Kelly, 2012). In addition to a dramatic weight gain in the patient, the regimen of a diet high in milk and fatty foods yielded some psychological changes as well. Hilde Bruch in The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa has noted how some of the physical consequences of under nutrition such as severe weight loss, skeleton-like appearance, anemia, low body temperature and low basal metabolism are accompanied by biochemical changes which “influence thinking, feeling, and behavior to an enormous degree” (Kelly, 2012). Some patients suffered a significant amount of weight loss making them looking sick. In Kelly’s article, there are images that show women before and after the rest cure. They all appeared physically healthy before the rest cure, but in the after picture, they all look physically unappealing. They appear confident with grins on their faces, but after the rest cure they look defeated and sad. They had lost their confidence and will power which is exactly the purpose of the rest cure. In today’s time, women are easily downgraded and can lose their confidence by the words and actions of a man. A man and women should be able to see eye-to-eye rather than a man looking down on a woman, which is what was happening in the 19th century. 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 (Martin, 2007).

Women have been continuously viewed as an object, apart of economics rather than apart of society. One of Gilman’s most powerful works, Women and Economics, compares the role of women to economic terms. This essay by Gilman is strangely accurate even in today’s society, but especially when she wrote it in the 19th century. One of the first economic principles which struck Gilman as relevant to her interest in the role of women in the late 1800s was the relationship between the sexes, which operated like a market for any other economic good and which sought marriage as an equilibrium solution (O’Donnell, 1988). Women can be compared to a supply and demand graph. The higher the demand for women, the more supply of women there were and vice versa. A women’s value was based off her material status and how she appeared rather than her success and education. Women that were becoming successful were feared and not valued as highly. It would’ve been presumed that women that can hold themselves without a man would be valued more than a woman that depends on a man, however, that is not the case. Gilman's economic reasoning directly attacked the problems of women at the turn of the century. However, she did not neglect the external costs which the customary role of women inflicted upon society at large. Men value control over a woman and woman was just another object they could control. Gilman then explored the possibility that men and women worked together in marriage toward common goals: they acted as partners would act in a business venture, Gilman could see little justification for this theory, adamantly declaring: a wife "is in no sense a business partner, unless she contributes capital or experience or labor as a man would in like relation" (O’Donnell, 1988).  In marriage, it appears women are used for bearing children and motherhood. Motherhood was what gave women value in the first place, or else they would hold no value and almost be treated as slaves for their husbands. Another thing that shows a women’s worth is the role of managing a household. Besides caring for the children, women must take care of the house and the husband’s needs. These things determine the value of a women. Men make it seem as if women were brought into the world to serve them and his children, not working in the economy and holding a high place in society. 

The women documented under the rest cure were all women who were progressing through society and becoming successful. This is ironic as none of the women placed under the rest cure are poor or completely dedicated to their husbands. This is another fact that shows that the rest cure was used to demean women as it destroyed them. Women who were not claimed as “successful” or “peaking” were not a threat to the male dominance possessed through the work force. Although the rest cure is no longer a treatment, men have found ways to make sure they are above women such as having a higher pay raise for doing the same job or having more opportunities and experience. Men are viewed as more professional, successful, and hold a higher value than women do. Women have been degraded continuously by men as they aren’t a strong or smart as them. Women were not only confined to specific productive methods but, in Gilman's time, severe restrictions existed on women's occupational choices outside the home (O’Donnell, 1988). Women were restricted due to the power of men. Men held dominance in all professions and refused to let a women threaten them, although women began to peak in the 19th century. Women were becoming midwives, authors and reformers, which threaten the male dominance in the work force and the economy. More people working would boost the economy but men were fearful of women rising and taking over. Men cared more about control, structure, and their social standing in society. They did not like the women were trying to overtake them and threaten their position. 

The issue of men having more power than women in society is still a continuing issue today. In today’s times, men hold majority of the power of our country. Using this current issue, we can dive into “The Yellow Wallpaper” and see how this is still a progressive issue, although it was much worse in the 19th century. Charlotte Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” through her treatment of the rest cure and how it drove her close to insanity. Opposed to this brilliant, sometimes arrogant physician was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a mostly self-educated artist, writer, and reformer, who championed the rights of women to intellectual and economic equality, as well as other reformist causes ranging from socialism to “child culture” to physical education for men and women (Martin, 2007). Women were beginning to peak during this time and men feared the rise of women. Men held all the power in each profession and were of afraid of women, who they have been taught was a piece of their property, taking that away from them. During the 19th century, men especially dominated the medical field as women did not have the experience or the education to grow in that field. Women had to listen to their physicians as they did not have enough knowledge to know that the rest cure was not a treatment used to heal women. In fact, the rest cure was used to mentally and physically drain women to prevent them from gaining anymore power. The treatment included isolation, high calorie diet, and rest. The physicians did not treat their patients nicely and forced them to follow through with whatever they said. They were insulting and rude. Women can be compared as an object as they are just a piece of the economy rather than an actual human being to society. Their value was based off motherhood and taking charge of a household, which can still be held true today. Even after the country has reformed, women are still not held on the same level of men. This issue can be used to better understand the analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and women’s role in society in the 19th century. 
