Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper there are several instances in which the narrator, a women living with her husband and newborn child, is treated harshly and unfairly. She is locked away in a room on the top level of the building, she is separated from her newborn child, and her husband refuses to have company come to visit. Unfair treatment of women was a highly popular trend in the early 1900’s. It was firmly believed in by society standards that women were strictly meant to be housewives.  The women had extremely stereotypical roles, that have since been overcome. If they chose to marry, they would stay home to look after the children and do housework while the man went out and worked to bring in a wage. If they were single, they took on jobs that involved cooking and cleaning, jobs that were meant to be woman’s work, such as waitressing (Science).

In the beginning of the story the narrator states that her husband is a physician. With this being stated it would be presumed that the husband, John, would be very fit to take good care of his wife. The narrator argues that she is sick, that she is not mentally well, however her husband refuses to believe this. Her brother who is also a physician of good standing agrees that there is nothing wrong with her. They both claim that she has temporary nervous depression and that she just needs to rest until she is well again. The “rest cure” was a popular “treatment for hysteria, neurasthenia, and other nervous illnesses, prescribed more often for women than men.” (Science).  The rest cure lasted about 6 to 8 weeks. It involved isolation from family and friends. 

The rest cure is the approach that John used on the narrator. During the rest cure patients were often reduced to the dependency of an infant. They would be force fed a milk based diet, and nurses would bathe and feed them. This can be seen in the way that John begins to treat the narrator like a child. In one instance the narrator states “John gathered me up in his arms, and carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head” (Gilman 305). The way that John picks her up as though she is a child and carries her to bed, and then reads her to sleep, can be seen as a method of the resting cure. 

One of the main ideas of the resting cure was to remove the women from a potentially toxic social atmosphere that may be in her home. However, it later became argued that the idea behind the rest cure was to reinforce that women should submit unquestioningly to their male authorities because it was good for their health (Trueman). We see the idea of moving a patient from their home in The Yellow Wallpaper as John has moved the “family” to a mansion for the summer, away from their home and he refused to allow the narrator to visit her cousin Henry and his wife Julia, and he did not allow them to come to visit her. The rest cure was also thought to boost the patient’s weight and increase their blood supply, as referenced when John reassured the narrator that they must stay where they are until she has made a full recovery. As the narrator pleas to leave John tries to comfort her, “I am a doctor dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you.” (Gilman 306)

The unfair treatment of women spread beyond the resting cure. Overall women were not treated as equals to men in society. Most young women were expected to get married and have children, the women that did manage to get a job were mostly domestic servants and teachers and majority of the servants were poorly educated. The educated teachers were mostly early education teachers; secondary schools were taught by men. (Trueman) During the 1900’s women were commonly trapped in an unsatisfactory, miserable marriage. Divorces in the 1900’s were few and far between and even if a woman wanted a divorce she most likely could not divorce her husband due to the fact that she was dependent on him. Women would not have been able to have the financial stability that was needed to survive on their own. In Gilman’s story, John has made himself the dominant half of the couple. He cut her off from the rest of the world, and even her own child. She was not allowed to write or read and most of the time could not leave the room with the yellow wallpaper.  

The 1800s and 1900s were known as “the golden age of hysteria” (postpartum). Often women’s nervousness or anxieties would be classified as hysteria. Hysteria was classified as strictly a women’s illness, and was believed to be caused by her emotionality. Basically, a women’s feelings and emotions were significantly more fragile than those of a man’s and thus women were much more likely to become hysterical (postpartum). Because postpartum depression was not diagnosed as a legitimate mental condition, it was classified as hysteria by default. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator never blatantly states that she is depressed. However, she does state that she is sure that she “never used to be so sensitive” and then that she thinks “it is due to this nervous condition” (Gilman 300). The narrator makes many references to not feeling well and being anxious or nervous. The fact that John separated her from their newborn child does not seem to help her nervous feelings. These could be seen as signs of what we now know to be postpartum depression. 

The narrator having postpartum depression can be recognized through her mopping, being disconnected from her child, loss of appetite and poor sleep habits. All of which John has dismissed as hysteria. A common symptom of postpartum depression is a mother not feeling bonded with her new baby. The narrator does not have the chance to be bonded with her baby because the baby is kept by a nanny and she rarely interacts with him. Women with postpartum depression will often skip the phase of “new mom bliss”. Instead of being joyful and celebration the birth of her child, the narrator is locked in a room away from her baby. She mentions him briefly and expresses that she wishes she could see him. It is also mentioned that she has lost a good deal of weight and that her appetite is poor. 

Unfair treatment of women and unequal standing of women to men in the 1900s plays a big part in aiding the storyline of The Yellow Wallpaper. The cultural beliefs and society stereotypes contribute greatly to the shaping of the story and the rather odd interactions that occur between the narrator and her husband John. The major key points of history in the story are unfair treatment of women, the resting cure, and postpartum depression.
