The treatment of psychiatric patients in the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century greatly varies from the treatment the doctors of today generally prescribe.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a fictional story gives a good description of what it was like for a woman to be committed to an asylum during that time period, and how alienation could lead to psychosis that wasn’t previously there before.  I used James Moran’s Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth Century Quebec and Ontario and The Rise of Mental Health in Nursing: A History of Psychiatric Care in Dutch Asylums, 1890-1920 to help understand the historical context behind the events that happened in The Yellow Wallpaper.  Moran uses the facts behind a woman named Sophie’s story to analyze the logistics of asylums in the nineteenth century.  By looking at Moran’s and Boschma’s historical background, we can infer what is going to happen in the story which is important because it tells us what the author is trying to portray.

Elements of history are often used in many fictional works to add some context to the story that is being told.  In most historical fiction, there is an indication of a particular time period or event in history, but they tend to be mostly surface level on the factual details of the things that happened in real life.  It is extremely important to use a historical text to aid in the analyzation of the fictional story, because it gives a good factual evidence to what was happening in the surrounding area of the story. In her story, Gilman is extremely vague about the significance of asylums during this time in history.  As stated in Moran’s book, he states that “there was a growing sense among reformers that debilitating social ills such as mental alienation could be dealt with and possibly eliminated through the creation of purpose built institutions” (Moran 7).  This gives us important information related to the commonality of these institutions, and gives us a point of reference as to how easy it was to get committed.  During this time, it was also common for the husbands of these so called “insane” women to keep them confined during the day as to not hurt themselves or others while the husband is out of the home. She states that   In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman states that “John is a physician-perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Gillman), and with the information gained from the other text it makes sense that the husband would be exiling his wife because of his lack of time to devote to her. The use of bed rest was also a popular way of further exiling the woman. In Boschma’s book , The Rise of Mental Health in Nursing: A History of Psychiatric Care in Dutch Asylums, 1890-1920, she explains that “Bed rest also had a psychological implication. It would convince patients that they were really sick, in need of rest, and obliged them to adjust as patients” (Boschma 66). This puts the reasoning behind the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper’s” bed rest into perspective. The use of this historical text allows the reader to gain a better understanding of what is going on in the background beyond the actual story. 

Historical non-fiction can be used to clarify the full meanings behind the fiction text you are analyzing, as well as aiding in inferring what will happen in the case that the author is very unclear about the events of the story.  In Gilman’s work, she describes a very intense situation where a woman is placed in a room for a long period of “rest” after showing symptoms of hysteria, but the author is not very clear about the whereabouts or the outcome of her story.  This practice was very typical in asylums in that particular time period.   Boscha states that the practice became so popular in the 1890’s that the architectural design of the asylums were changed to accommodate for more beds (Boscha 67).  Although, Gilman never actually states that the main woman is in an asylum, but based on the context I gathered from the text Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth Century Quebec and Ontario I could infer that the woman’s alienation could have led to her imminent psychotic break.  In Moran’s book, it says that “the early promise held out for such institutions as the asylum, they failed completely in their original aims” and “Asylums… serve a much less humanitarian function as useful locations for the management and custodial treatment of those society deemed to be deviant” (Moran 7).  This is helpful in the analyzation of the woman with the yellow wallpaper’s case because it provides us with a good idea of how her alienation affected her. She states “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course, I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.” (Gilman). Another thing from the historical text that could help us infer the woman’s eventual down fall is Sophie’s obsession with religion.  Her obsession with religion was what tipped off her family, as well as her priest, to the fact that she may have more deeply rooted underlying issues which led to her eventual mental breakdown. Although the woman from Gilman’s text is not obsessed with religion, she finds an obsession with “The Yellow Wallpaper in her room.  This obsession causes her to believe that the wallpaper is speaking to her, and is encouraging her to “finish it”. In both texts, the women’s obsessions ended up becoming their identity. The similarities between Sophie’s case and the case of the woman from “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives me reason to believe that the Women with “The Yellow Wallpaper” might have committed or attempted suicide.  In Sophie’s story, it states that as time went on her mental condition became more severe and she tried to kill herself several times (Moran 2,3).  In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it doesn’t clearly say that she committed or attempted suicide, but based on this stated in the text “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman), and the evidence from Sophie’s story, it led me to believe that it was very possible that the woman could have tried to kill herself.  In certain historical fiction stories, it is important to gather information from a historically correct text so that you can understand and infer what’s going on aside from the vagueness of the story.

In the world of fiction and story telling everything is relative, but when you add historically accurate texts these “relative” things can be backed up and better understood. These texts offer much to be analyzed by themselves, but when placed together the text with factual evidence give the reader more of an inside look to what was going on in the background.  In conclusion, the use of a historically correct text is important to further a reader’s understanding of a historical fiction text.  
