In Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, one can clearly see how the treatment of people with mental illnesses, specifically woman in the nineteenth century, was very different from today. By looking at articles involving woman and mental illness in the nineteenth century, I can see how understanding the historical background helps shape this text and the way Gilman was treated at this time period. In the story, Gilman tells the story of her own self destruction because of the environment she was basically forced into due to the view of woman with hysteria in this time period. Her husband, who is a doctor, tells her that she has a nervous disorder where she cannot do much of anything due to the fact that she just a baby. With that, he moves her into a house and into what she calls a nursery. However, as we learn throughout the rest of the story, it is not actually a story, but described as an institution or an asylum with barred windows, rings for chains to restrain someone, and a bed bolted to the floor. By being confined in this space, Gilman goes insane and sees a woman in the wallpaper trying to escape, which very much represents her own life and plight. Near the end, we see the decent into her madness as she participates in the destruction of the room, and then tries, but does not succeed in committing suicide. 

By reading Joseph P. Morrissey and Howard H. Goldman’s article named, “Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in the United States: Historical Developments and Reforms,” I was able to better understand the treatment of people in the nineteenth century who were diagnosed with mental illnesses. The article states, “By the 1870s, the functions of state asylums had been clearly delineated; their central purpose was defined by the state legislatures in terms of custodial care and community protection; treatment was of secondary importance. Other trends dating from the 1850s were also solidified; as the state asylums became filled with lower-class patients, well-to-do families resorted to private facilities for the care of their mentally ill members” (1986). After reading this, I am able to see why people were treated like Gilman was, of secondary importance and without any consideration. The article also talks about how in the late nineteenth century, the years from 1890-1950 are referred to as the Dark Ages in the state care and treatment of people with mental illnesses and disorders. This statement lets the reader know that in this time period, the underdeveloped the understanding of mental illnesses were very underdeveloped. Even doctors in the early nineteenth century did not have nearly as much information dealing with these illnesses to diagnose people, let alone treat them by putting them in these institutions that made them go crazy. They were also not properly treated nor not given the care they needed in order to survive their illness. Even though state mental hospitals were becoming better equipped with an improving understanding of mental illnesses, they did not provide “minimum levels of care-not otherwise available-for individuals to survive by themselves” (1986), according to Morrissey and Goldman. They also stated, “It would take another generation, a new cycle of institutional reform, and the new-cataclysmic emptying of state mental hospitals for this fundamental truth to be fully appreciated by mental health policymakers” (1986). All in all, I can take away a lot from this article that helps me better understand Gilman’s story and the way that mentally ill people were treated in the nineteenth century. 

The second article that I chose is by Charles E. Rosenberg called, “And Heal the Sick: The Hospital and the Patient in the 19th Century America,” which talks about how in the 1970s, it has become fashionable to think of the hospital patient as an inmate. This sentence really sticks out to me because of the way Gilman described the nursery she was staying in. She talks about how there were rings on the wall, by which she means there are rings to chain people to the bed that is bolted to the floor of the bedroom. Every detail about the room screams it is not a nursery, but like a prison for the people who reach the point of insanity that they have to be chained to the walls. The article states, “At the Philadelphia Hospital, a youthful resident could complain in 1808 that the in-patients were so routine, chronic and uninteresting, that his position would be intellectually barren without the variety provided by out-patient duties” (1977). The fact that residents in the early nineteenth century were completely uninterested in their patients, whether or not they were critical, goes to show that patients were not given the treatment that they deserved. The article also states, “In 1835, for example, Philadelphia’s Board of Guardians of the Poor suggested the following arrangement of women’s wards in the Almshouse: 1. aged and helpless women in bad health, 2. aged and helpless women who can sew and knit, 3. aged and helpless who are good sewers, 4. spinners, 5. scrubbers and washerwoman” (1977). These points all clearly show how women were treated in Almshouses of the early nineteenth century. The fact that they suggested these five things for woman with mental illness to complete is very degrading and shows they were not looked at as real human beings, but as objects. Gilman was not allowed to engage in anything that would require stimulus because it would cause her to actually feel something for once, instead of sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Another very important point that the article talks about is that fact that in 1898, the chief resident complained that his wards were crowded with patients who needed very little or slight treatment and care. All of these examples clearly show how Gilman was feeling and the way not only she, but all women with mental illnesses in the nineteenth century were treated. 

All in all, these two articles were very helpful in describing the treatment and care of mentally ill patients in the early nineteenth centuries. In Gilman’s, The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman is put into what is basically a prison cell, which in Rosenberg’s article, it was fashionable to think of the hospital patient as an inmate. Because of the way Gilman describes the room, we can also infer that she was put here to show how she was being treated like a child. Out of everything I have read in each of these articles, I was clearly able to better understand the treatment and care of mentally ill patients in the nineteenth century, which is when Gilman wrote, “The Yellow Wallpaper”.
