The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is about the tragedy of a woman driven to insanity by having to suppress mental anxieties brought on by being enclosed in a room for the majority of her time. During this time period, the late 19th century, postnatal depression was usually treated by resting in bed all day isolated from anything that could cause stress. Male physicians would usually check on them, but since the women were looked down on as wrong minded because of their mental condition, they took everything they said with a grain of salt. Back in this time male discourse dominated in married couples, which is why John refused to acknowledge that his wife had a real mental illness after she repeatedly proved so. Instead of treating his wife’s ill postnatal state, John actually worsened her depression to psychosis by asserting his discourse and isolating his ill wife.

Discourse and gender have a lot to do with how John turned the narrator insane. As her physician, he always tells her what to do and what not to do in order to get better. Because she is in an ill postnatal state John doesn’t believe anything she says is right since he assumes she isn't thinking completely straight; Therefore John ends up suppressing her womanly discourse and there's nothing she can do but endure it. If the sociological factors were closer to present day’s, then John would have catered to his wife more and the depression would have been eased rather than worsened. The dominance of male discourse in the family and between a married couple in the 19th century caused John to disregard his wife and what she said to him. This denial over a period of time caused John’s wife to finally become angry with him and tear all of the wallpaper off of the walls and express herself. Without being allowed to speak or write, she had no other means of expression or finding a voice than to tear the wallpaper: “If the narrator in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ in any sense discovers women’s discourse, it exists in the blankness behind the wallpaper” (Ford 312). Taking the paper off the wall to blankness was her stand against John to show him what he had done. He fainted upon how insane his wife was, which was his fault for turning her condition worse than it was. He successfully suppressed her discourse by belittling her as a person and taking charge of her treatment as her husband and her physician. A lack of women’s equality and rights at the time made it easy for John to control his wife’s treatment and end up worsening her postnatal depression to psychosis.

Isolation has been known to drive people insane because of the loneliness and the time that is spent thinking too much to the point of craziness. By putting his wife in the crusty yellow-wallpapered room alone for most of the time where she cannot speak to anyone, John causes her postnatal depression to turn into psychosis. As a woman she is being looked down on by John, and being in an unwell state doesn't help her to show her opposition to this. She wants to find a voice and defy him but she can’t because John unfortunately has control over her treatment. John disregarded her speech and conversation eventually until she didn’t speak at all because she was silenced by him in the room. She was left for hours only to think in the torn up room she was stuck in, which slowly drove her insane. This isn’t good for her treatment because she deserves full support and understanding for her condition. Back then, “Male physicians and their female patients, together, created puerperal insanity' and that creation both reflected and contributed to sexual ideology and medical specialization” which shows the relationship of John and his wife (Theriot 72). John asserts full control over her isolated treatment without taking any consideration or feedback from her, which shows the problem with the effectiveness of the methods used to treat postnatal depression in the 1890s. For instance, before bed rest was the common treatment, bleeding was the treatment for postnatal depression. The narrator writes about the often long days where John is gone for hours which shows how John was basically leaving it all up to her to get mentally healthy alone. Due to the uneducated methods of treatment at the time, John isolated his ill wife until her postnatal depression turned into psychosis instead of aiding her as her physician.

The male dominance and ineffective treatment methods in this story are unique to the time period. Many things like sociological factors and medical treatment methods were questionable and underdeveloped in the late 19th century, and have since then been improved. Because the woman Women's rights and equality have been built and improvements are still being made to this day from then. There is not as much bad postnatal depression as there used to be because of changes in gender roles and gains in equality. The Yellow Wallpaper is a gothic fiction story that focuses on showing the lack of women's equality and rights with tragedy. This story along with many others from the time were crucial in addressing a problem in the social norms and women’s discourse because over time the movement has gotten much attention and reward. 
