What does it mean to be insane? Furthermore, is insanity inevitable or the byproduct of improper treatment? Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempts to broach this question in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The narrator—left unnamed—is diagnosed with a nervous disorder and encouraged to undergo a treatment characterized by isolation, rest, and a structured diet. Her nervousness gradually worsens as the narrator becomes increasingly more distant from the outside world. The adverse effects presented in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to the narrator’s rest-intensive treatment suggests that Gilman believed the treatments available to women in the nineteenth century, notably S. Weir Mitchell’s “resting cure”, to be more detrimental than beneficial to their mental condition. 

The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is introduced during a stay at a colonial mansion as a woman suffering from nervousness. Her husband John, a physician, assumes her to be experiencing a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 300). Her diagnosis is not abnormal considering the time period during which the short story is set, the late nineteenth century. Neurasthenia or, as it was translated from Greek, “the lack of nervous strength” was first diagnosed by E. H. Van Deusen in 1869 “but rapidly spread through society as physicians applied it to men and women of all ages and classes, so that by the turn of the twentieth century it was one of the most common medical conditions” (Schuster 696). It is unsurprising then that her change in demeanor be diagnosed under the wide-reaching title of neurasthenia. Comparatively, her condition would be narrowed in the current timeframe to a definition more aligned with postpartum depression. This diagnosis is plausible considering Schuster’s declaration that “today, physicians commonly compare the diagnosis and its collection of symptoms to a range of disorders including…postpartum depression” (696). The narrator is in fact a new mother to a baby boy from whom she is separated during her summer long period of isolation. Despite declaring her newborn child to be a “dear boy”, the narrator holds, “I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (Gilman 302). Her assertion upholds the notion that the source of her behavioral shift can be traced to the birth of her child rather than associated with a commonplace nervous disorder that was attributed to a majority of Victorian-era women. Umbrella disorders, such as neurasthenia, led to the improper treatment of numerous ailments which could allow for conditions, like those of the narrator, to worsen in lieu of improving. 

Her commonplace diagnosis was treated with an equally commonplace care regiment—for that time—the rest cure. The rest cure was developed by S. Weir Mitchell as a treatment for nervous disorders. It originated as a treatment for Civil War soldiers suffering from causalgia or burning pain and phantom limbs. One such soldier, S. Johnson, suffered total motor paralysis after a bullet lodged itself in his spinal column, and was treated with a prescription of rest, massage, dieting, and electrotherapy “the four major components…that would later constitute Mitchell’s trademark method of treatment, the rest cure” (Cervetti 74). A similar treatment was prescribed to the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by her reputable physician husband, Johm, and brother. She was “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she was] well again” with John giving special direction to any movement she did dare to make (Gilman 300). John wishes for his wife to rest as much as possible without interruption from “stimulating people” (Gilman 302). This aversion to company, especially family and friends, is congruent to the approach described by Weir Mitchell. Her treatment was unsuccessful as her period of isolation prompted delusions concerning the yellow, patterned wallpaper that adorned the walls of her temporary bedroom. To her, the wallpaper altered in form, becoming a layered image hiding a secret presence behind its decorative exterior. As the narrator’s awareness of this hidden presence—the woman who shakes the pattern that bars her from the open room and appears to be “always creeping”—increases, her crossover into insanity becomes more evident (Gilman 309). The narrator’s actions begin to mimic those of the woman trapped in the paper until she, at last, identifies herself among one of the women who emerged from the wall. During her final hours in that yellow room, she observes “so many of those creeping women” and wonders if “they all [came] out of the wallpaper as [she] did” as she “[creeps] smoothly on the floor” (Gilman 311). This behavioral shift represents her declining sanity. It was her time alone, staring at those speckled yellow walls that led to her insanity. Her treatment ultimately becoming a mistreatment of her condition which resulted in a state of mind that was much worse than the one she began with. 

There was a chance the narrator could have been truly saved, but for that outcome to have become reality her husband—who also happened to double as her doctor—would have had to consider his wife’s views on her condition, an uncommon notion at the time. In the story, John becomes representative of Weir Mitchell and his dismissal of his female patient’s commentary on their condition. One patient, Winifred Howells, who was sent to Mitchell by her father William Dean Howells was “very stubborn, and [had] to be forced along the path to health with a very firm hand” (Cervetti 88). Mitchell forced his treatments upon Winifred despite her objections, ultimately sending her away to Merchantville, Pennsylvania where she would die a week later. Mr. Howells—Winifred’s father—supposed in one letter that his daughter “died homesick and wondering at her separation, in the care of the doctors who fancied they were curing her” (Cervetti 89). He suggests that his daughter’s condition worsened due to a lack of attention by Mitchell who overlooked his patients’ objections as mere stubbornness. Similarly, John overlooks his wife’s statements about her health and the wallpaper as silly fancies that she need not concern herself with. When the narrator mentioned her aversion to the yellow wallpaper that bombarded her sight each day, he laughed and refused to change it because he believed “[she] was letting it get the better of [her], and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Gilman 302). Likewise, her objection of being only “better in body” when speaking about the state of her condition with John was met with “a stern, reproachful look,” evidence that John did not care for her input if it contradicted his methods (Gilman 306). In John’s mind his word as a physician—an expert—was to be valued more than the protests of the patient, in this case his wife. His lack of attention to her opinions on her own condition allow for it to worsen to the degree that it inevitably does. Had he been more attentive, her sanity may not have dwindled as it did. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” presents the narrative of a young woman sent to rest-away her ailments to support the notion that the medical treatments available to women in the Victorian era—notably Weir Mitchell’s rest cure—were more detrimental than they were beneficial. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is diagnosed with a nervous condition and prescribed rest, isolation, and a stringent diet—a treatment similar to that of the rest cure—by her physician husband as a means to boost her mental and physical state. However, the treatment which aimed to improve her health backfired. Her separation from reality and the outside world allowed her to slip into an ever more delusional state until her mind was overrun entirely by fanciful images. 
