In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the narrator is being treated with the rest cure due to her husband claiming that she has nervous depression.  The narrator is not able to write or visit with family, instead she is locked up in an old bedroom and forced to sleep all day and overeat.  Her husband John is a doctor and thinks this is the solution to her acting unusual lately.  Her being trapped in the bedroom actually starts to drive her crazy rather than heal her.  Since John is not only her husband but also her doctor he holds complete control over her regarding her mental state.  A man holding all the power over a woman when regarding medical cases was common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Typically when a woman was seen as becoming too independent or dominant she would be looked at as mentally insane because the men did not like to see the women sway from the cultural norms.  This was an attempt to keep women in the home and out of the man’s workplace.

“Madness and gender in the long eighteenth century” by R.A. Houston discusses the correlation between gender and madness during the eighteenth century.  This correlation directly relates to the diagnosis of the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with hysteria or nervous depression.  The article explains that because society was male dominated all of the decisions including the mental state of women were decided by men.  This being said women who failed to adapt to cultural norms typically were diagnosed with mental disabilities and commonly thrown into institutions.  Men and doctors saw insistent women who tried to sway from social customs as confusing and almost threatening.  As a result these women ended up being diagnosed with a variety of different mental illness and faced with many bizarre treatments.  This ties directly with the rest cure that John tries to use to treat his wife’s supposed mental illness.  The article goes on to describe how many people blamed the madness on the female body for example menopause was used as an explanation for all the older females that were placed in mental institutions.  However Houston adds an alternative explanation to this, that older women tended to not have a father or husband to take care of them and thus they ended up in asylums because they were seen as incapable of taking care of themselves.  Both statements can relate back to “The Yellow Wallpaper”.  The narrorator was treated with the rest cure, which was seen as the best cure for hysteria in women because they were seen as delicate compared to men.  Also during the nineteenth century women were seen as powerless without a man by her side.  The article goes on to discuss the evident relationship between gender and mental diagnoses but Houston offers a variety of explanations and criticism.  His ideas include the given indication that the biological makeup of women could make them more prone to developing madness.  Houston also expands upon the idea that women during this time commonly differed from the societal standards that they were expected to live up to and were more interested in their freedoms, which made them stand out and appear almost threatening to men. 

The roll gender played in the diagnosis and treatment of the narrator as presented Gilman’s story and is also reflected in “(W)Righting Women: Constructions Of Gender, Sexuality And Race In The Psychiatric Chart” by Andrea Daley.  How women are talked about in a social context or how they are reported of also plays a large roll in the diagnosis process.  The way John talks about his wife makes it apparent that he views her as almost a child.  John calls his wife “a blessed little goose” in one part of the story which makes it clear that despite his love for her he still sees her as lesser than him.  This failure to see his wife as equal explains the reasons that her judgments regarding her own health and mental state are seen as inferior to her husbands because of the way all men looked at women during this time period.    

The way powerful women are looked at as hegemonic or dominant, which deviates from the norms making them stand out to medical examiners is significant because although the narrorator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is not seen to hold much power, she is unemployed and is a woman.  Her interest in writing reflects this differentiation from the average woman.  The narrorator has a passion for writing and it becomes one of the main things she is eager to do while she is being treated, however John thinks the writing is having a negative affect on her health and restricts her from doing so.  In order for her to keep up with writing she has to do so in secret and be clever about the way she hides it from her husband and sister in law. Another interesting point made in Daley’s article is that the oppression of women has been seen as a parallel factor with the disadvantages positions they are put in.  This directly correlates with the narrator’s position in “The Yellow Wallpaper” due to the fact that she is an unemployed woman in the eighteenth century we can already tell that she holds barely any power in society and this could lead to other drawbacks such as the supposed case of madness she is being treated with. 

The idea that asylums were just places that insistent women could be enrolled in in order to silence them is also mentioned in this article and can also be seen in Gilman’s story.  John believes his wife is mad and diagnoses her with nervous depression and treats her with the rest cure treatment, which requires her to be confined to a room to sleep all day. Restricting the narrorator to only a small bedroom for months can be seen as an attempt to silence her as well as an attempt to treat her hysteria.  Daley’s article goes on to explain that the popularity of psychiatry could have been a likely a cause of many cases of mental illnesses in women.  This is because many women began to be diagnosed and made famous for being mad right as modern psychiatry started to become recognized.  This is an important coincidence to look at because women weren’t particularly labeled as insane until these bizarre treatments and ideas started to evolve.  This can tie into “The Yellow Wallpaper” because the narrorator may have never been diagnosed or treated for her nervous depression if John hadn’t heard about this phenomenal rest cure treatment.  This is interesting because the narrorator could have been perfectly fine but since hysteria was such a talked about disorder during this time especially in women her husband could have started to notice symptoms that weren’t actually there.  

“Gender, Class, And Madness In Nineteenth-Century France” by Jill Harsin expands on insane asylums during the nineteenth century and looks at how they were commonly seen as places where disobedient women could be placed in order to “fix” them.  This again can be tied to the narrorator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and her hunger for writing in spite of her husband’s orders.  This article goes on to talk about how asylums were places where women were controlled my men, referring to the patients generally as the women and the physicians generally being men.  The physicians held immense amounts of power over the patients, which gave rise to more issues among the oppression of women.  This directly relates to the relationship between the narrorator and her husband, John.  John being her husband wants the best for her but he also takes complete control of her regarding her medical state because he is also her doctor.  The narrorator has no say when it comes to what she wants as far as her treatment goes.  This is because her husband views his opinions about her health superior to her own judgment of her health.  

The “treatment” that is given to her by John makes her more insane than ever before because she is being trapped in a room and is unable to do anything she desires.  John claims that he is treating her with the rest cure because he wants the best for her but when it comes to all the restrictions the narrorator is faced with it is clear that John is acting more like her doctor than her husband.  Harsin’s piece continues to mention how psychiatry during this time began to challenge the choices that could be made by patients and also how women were constantly sent to asylums solely to be silenced.  Which again relates back to the relationship presented in “The Yellow Wallpaper” because the narrorator had zero say in how she felt she should be treated and was basically shoved in a room in an attempt for her to rest and then miraculously recover.  

Another important thing I came to notice was the fact that throughout the entire story the narrorator is never given a name.  Making the narrorator nameless adds to the idea that her voice can account for women as a whole during this time period and together their roll was seen as significantly inferior to men during this time.  Not giving the narrorator a name makes her appear almost as an object rather than a person.  This is not the only time she is belittled, John making every decision regarding her life and health again makes the narrorator seem less that a person.    

Social class in regards to madness is also examined in Jill Harsin’s article.  This is important in regards to “The Yellow Wallpaper” because the narrorator and her husband can be seen as an upper middle class couple.  This is because they are able to rent out a second home for months and an average couple during this time would not be able to do so.  Upper class men during this time were seen as the ones who normally “repressed” the mentally insane.  And those who were labeled as mentally insane were typically the females as well as the poor.  John plays the roll of the bourgeoisie man who took complete control of his inferior wife in order to rid her of this so-called madness that she recently obtained.  

“Neurophysiology Of Conversion Disorders: A Historical Perspective” by Marc Crommelinck looks at the opinions of different psychiatrists regarding hysteria.  Pierre Adolphe Piorry was a believer in the “uterine theory” in relation to hysteria, meaning that he thought it stemmed from the ovaries in women and the spermatic cords in men.  This theory meant that people thought that hysteria effected and acted differently in men and women.  This theory ties directly to the treatments used for hysteria during the nineteenth century as noted in “The Yellow Wallpaper”.  The narrorator is treated with the rest cure because she is seen as a weak and fragile woman who should just sleep in order to get well because doing anything else could negatively affect her health.  However men during this same time period who were diagnosed with hysteria were treated with something called the west cure.  

The west cure was more or less a trip for men out west that included horseback riding and male bonding in order to relieve stress and offer these men an outlet for adventure.  The difference between these two treatments is drastic and shows how large the difference was between how men viewed and treated men versus how they viewed and treated women when it came to treating the same disorder.  Men diagnosed with hysteria or nervous depressions were encouraged to go out and do things in order to eliminate all stress they might have.  Whereas women diagnosed with this disorder were discouraged from doing anything of the sort, for example even writing was not allowed, and they were instead forced to stay inside, rest and avoid contact with family and friends in order for them to heal.  

   The narrorator is being forced into the rest cure when John forces her to stay in the old deteriorated bedroom that she is not too fond of.  He wants her to stay in this room and get plenty of rest.  He also wants her to eat a good amount of food and keep to herself.  This act of keeping the narrorator locked in a room ties back to the idea of gender rolls in the eighteen hundreds.  According to men, women were supposed to stay in the home and treating a woman with the rest cure would fulfill her so-called desire to be at home.  However men on the other hand were supposed to have high paying and powerful jobs such as doctors, like John.  However it seems that the narrorator is not at all feeling that she wants to stay in the home after only a few months of the rest cure.  Instead the exact opposite is seen to be true, she starts to feel trapped similar to the woman she thinks she sees stuck in the wallpaper.  Instead of being content with staying in the room and getting lots of rest she tries to free this imaginary trapped woman from the wallpaper by tearing it to shreds.  

On top of forcing these aspects of the treatment on to the narrorator, she is also restricted from doing things she wants to do.  John doesn’t allow her to write or visit family because he does not think it will be good for her health.  Despite that these two things along with spending time with her baby are the only things the narrorator desires, and John strongly discourages all of them.  He believes that restricting her from these things will help her get better when in reality her condition only worsens.  
