The use of the rest cure and the treatment of women in the 19th century concerning mental health shaped The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman into a text that is able to accurately portray the male dominated culture and society in which it was created. Having prior knowledge of these two subjects aids the reader in analyzing and interpreting the characters’ behavior, as well as how the social ideals of the time constrain the narrator. The unfair treatment of women at the time is evident in the text as the husband of the narrator clearly possesses all the power in the marriage and is able to control his wife to the point that she is put in isolation for her own health. The husband references the rest cure, first used by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in the 1870s, and requires that the narrator undergo this treatment and gives her no say in the decision. The rest cure and the unfair treatment of women in the 19th century regarding mental health are both important in interpreting the reading and the historical and cultural time period, 

The rest cure was first introduced in the 1870s by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, meant to treat neurasthenics, who were just “nervous women”. The treatment included three core elements: isolation, rest, and feeding. The patients were not allowed to read, write, or partake in any activities; they were ordered to remain in bed all day. Patients were also not allowed to have contact with friends or family during the time of their treatment. Although this did not apply to the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper, as her husband was her physician and her husband’s sister helped take care of her during her isolation. The narrator also went against the rules of her treatment and kept a journal in secret, which is how she is telling the story. The rest cure also played a big part in reinforcing typical gender roles at this time, meaning that men had complete dominance over women and their decisions, even ones regarding their own mental well-being. Keeping a woman strictly on bed rest and not allowing them to do any kind of intellectual activity meant that the women would be kept in their proper sphere, which is what was being done to the narrator, though she was able to be intellectually active in secret. 

The unfair treatment of women in the 1900s concerning mental health and admittance into asylums relates to the situations present in The Yellow Wallpaper. In the 1900s, men were allowed to diagnose, often falsely, women with depression or other mental conditions. Within the article exploring this unfair treatment of women, the authors write, “…these men were admitting their wives for a break, to teach them not to disobey, to take them away from their children…” (Pouba/Tianen 100). The unjust society of this time period allowed for men to basically punish their wives if they wished by putting them into mental institutions, with the women unable to control any aspect of the situation. Husbands, brothers, and other men in a woman’s life could admit the woman into a mental hospital or asylum, even if they did not have consent from the patient. While the narrator in the story is not put into an asylum, she is trapped in isolation against her wishes under the orders of her husband, John. The narrator tries to have a “real earnest reasonable talk” (Gilman 305) with John about going to visit her cousins but he refuses to let her go because she is too weak and he thinks she would not be able to handle it. All the narrator is able to do is lay in bed and rest, and as she does this she develops a twisted fascination with the wallpaper. Day after day, staring at the patterns on the wallpaper she begins to lose her sanity and hallucinates a woman within the wallpaper due to her unwarranted confinement.

The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper becomes a different person by the end of the story, shamelessly obsessed with the wallpaper and the woman she sees trapped inside. The reasoning for her descent into insanity is the isolation ordered by her husband. Since she is not allowed out or to do anything productive or intellectual, she is forced to retreat inside her own mind where she eventually goes crazy. This was not an uncommon thing to happen to the women that were involuntarily admitted into asylums on false diagnoses of insanity. Women that were subjected to this treatment sometimes actually went insane due to their detachment from society, in some cases this even led to suicides. In fact, suicide has been a controversial possible ending to The Yellow Wallpaper, as the narrator’s husband faints when he enters the room to find a woman, possibly the narrator or possibly the woman from the wallpaper, creeping around the perimeter of the room. 

The behavioral aspects of the narrator deviate from the societal norms during the 19th century; she is supposed to be a normal housewife, who takes care of her child and her husband. Though due to her postpartum depression, she cannot function in the way that the men who control society expect her to, therefore she is subjected to the illogical treatments for women at the time. Her new behavior becomes erratic and unstable, describing the wallpaper in deranged ways, such as: “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing…It is like a bad dream…That is why I watch it always.” (Gilman 307). Her increasing fascination with the wallpaper causes her to become paranoid about it and suspect her husband as well as her husband’s sister of sneaking in the room to analyze the paper just as she does. She eventually morphs into an unrecognizable character, perhaps because she has been sucked into the persona of the woman trapped behind the bars of the wallpaper. 

The narrator ultimately becomes like the small percentage of the women admitted into asylums that were not actually insane but became their diagnoses due to the confinement and isolation they were forced into. At one point the narrator considers jumping out her window, “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out the window would be an admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong to even to try” (Gilman 311). This quote supports the one theory that the narrator actually commits suicide at the end of the story. In this theory, there is shift in the narrator at the end because the first narrator commits suicide by hanging herself: “But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope…” (Gilman 111). The last narrator is the actually woman from the wallpaper, observing the scene as the first narrator dies and her husband comes in the room and faints, and she finally escapes from the bars that trap her in the wallpaper. This dark and unfortunate ending to the story once was the real life ending for some women that were unfairly subjected to Dr. Weir Mitchell’s questionable rest cure. According to the article discussing the rest cure, “A patient’s response to the rest cure depended on many factors, including his or her own socioeconomic level, diagnosis, and temperament,” (Stiles 3). Due to any of these factors, added with the unwarranted confinement, a woman could actually loose her mind. 

The patriarchal society and the creation of the rest in the 1900s negatively impacted women, especially where mental health was concerned, and this was able to shape the storyline and the characters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Analyzing the historical and cultural time period, helps readers understand Gilman’s characters and their behavioral aspects and how they change throughout the story. The social constraints at time caused the narrator to be under the power of her husband, thanks to the society which was dominated by men. The way in which the narrator reacts to the treatment of the rest cure and oppression by her husband mirrors the way a lot of real women ended up in the 1900s. Misdiagnosis of symptoms was prevalent by male doctors, leading to the increase in the number of women in asylums who did not actually need to be there at all. Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes all of this into account and really uses the reinforced gender roles of the time period to shape The Yellow Wallpaper into a text that would bring attention to this inequality. 
