Do you remember when you were a child being sent into timeout? The anxiety from only a few minutes to an hour of confinement would typically cause us all to go a little crazy.  In her 1935 autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman stated that she has suffered from severe depression in which she then went to receive treatment for her nervous breakdowns from Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1885. Weir Mitchell’s treatment included a daily regimen of bed rest, isolation, overfeeding, and massage/electricity on her muscles. Gilman realizing that the treatment was only furthering her depression and anxiety, left the treatment and left her husband. In time, Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” to show the unfavorable effects of Weir Mitchell’s popular “rest cure.” Initially, the short story was widely viewed by the public as a gothic horror story of the mental downfall of an obviously sick woman. The short story as described by Gilman was never intended to be a horror story of sorts but rather a tale about how the “rest cure” affects the physical and mental health of the female patients (“Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”). Obviously, the short story was embellished to further the ideal of how men caused the decline of Gilman’s mental health. Through the repression and prohibiting female patients from having any intellectual activity, the rest cure was an efficient means of the reinforcement of Postbellum gender roles. “The Yellow Wallpaper” served two purposes for Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it was a warning to the male physicians of the time but also served as a call to action for women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s warning to the Postbellum physicians and to people of the modern era that women must strive for intellectual activity, have an unwillingness to accept norms within society, and have a mindset to always question authority.

What exactly were these Victorian era women struggling with? Victorian era women were frequently taught to have an inferior view and need for dependence on the patriarchy. Their lives were simply domestic, striving only to take care of the needs of the children and then man of the household. Sometimes the responsibility of running a household proved to be far too much for many women. The women would start to show signs of neurological abnormality. This would be the perfect opportunity for the rest cure to be placed upon these women. When the rest cure was originally being introduced, many women were already expressing a concern with how the roles between genders occurred. 

By forbidding the females who are participating in the rest cure any form of intellectual activity, Weir Mitchell along with his patriarchal colleagues reinforced the idea of women staying within the domestic sphere of life. Weir Mitchell went on further to say that “The woman’s desire to be on a level of competition with man and to assume his duties is, I am sure, making mischief” (Doctor and Patient pg. 13). His views of women are that they are lesser than the man on every possible level, they are simply “physiologically different.” Since Gilman was an author, refraining from any form of intellectual activity would have been significantly difficult. The secretive writing was a hobby that Gilman had partaken in while receiving the cure, through the narrator she shows that the decline in the production of intellectual activity such as reading, writing, or speaking can be linked to the slow decay of the mental capacity of the women receiving “treatment.”

John is a combined representation of Gilman’s husband and Gilman’s physician, Weir Mitchell. Gilman felt as if neither of the men cared about her opinion during the treatment (“Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”). As seen within the short story Gilman also felt as if both men tried to narrow her ability of have artistic freedom. Throughout the story, the narrator is shrugged off when talking to John about the lack of improvement and ineffectiveness of the treatment itself. John’s behavior throughout the story is consistent with the idea that he doesn’t have overwhelming concern for the health of his wife. Gilman has surely expressed the same views after she split up with her husband due to his poor treatment during her personal treatment. Gilman shows through the narrator that personally she believes that the furthering of her intellectual work would be the best cure for women receiving treatment, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman is speaking to the reader of the Victorian era until present day that: “…Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (The Yellow Wallpaper pg. 300). Would Gilman’s husband truly not care about her wellbeing? Of course, most husbands would care about the health of his wife. The men of the Victorian era however did not want their treatments to be proven wrong by a woman whom was out of line with traditional gender roles. 

In contrast to the rest cure, men were often given the choice to partake in the rest cure or go out on the “west cure.” Mitchell would often send nervous men out west to participate in male bonding. The activities included that of cattle-ranching, hunting, fishing, and rough riding in the countryside. Often the patients would have enjoyed the cure and came back with new life. The business men who were struggling in the workplace would be sent in hopes that they come back producing success and intellectual improvement. Famous men such as the 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, poet Walt Whitman, and painter Thomas Eakins were all among those who received the “west cure” treatment for their mental problems (“Go Rest, Young Man”). The men who opted for the rest cure were often still treated differently from the women’s cure. The men were given the opportunity to be out of bed for a far greater time span. The men also were granted access to their businesses in which they could go and do work for around an hour each day. Clearly the males’ ability to partake in intellectual thinking through writing, speaking, and reading provided a huge impact on the overall wellbeing of the patients. 

Weir Mitchell’s practices may have been put out by the ideals of psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud. The psychoanalyst said that the symptoms of hysteria were caused by past traumatic experiences and that a need for them to talk to someone would be the best therapy possible. The rest cure slowly was weened out of the medical field as an acceptable means of treatment. However, the effects of Mitchell’s work can still be profoundly seen today. For example, when women have a laborious birth they are in turn placed on bed rest until they gain proper health back. Nowadays the female body isn’t supposed to look as plump as in Mitchell’s ideals. The female body is still viewed as a sign of either lively or poor health based on the amount of fat that she possesses. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” provides a snapshot of the way that medical practices could have been if others hadn’t come about with better and healthier theories of treatment. She provides a simple view of how something as little as doing absolutely nothing can drive a brain into the depths of madness. Gilman’s short story was not that of an ancient horror story but of a warning to always question authority and the rules set into place by society. 
