There is no doubt that the world has become so much more knowledgeable in the field of health care, specifically mental illnesses, since the early nineteenth century. By looking at articles involving woman and mental illness in the nineteenth century, I can see how understanding the historical background of each helps shape Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and the way women with mental illnesses were treated and cared for. In the text, Gilman tells a similar story of what she went through as a mentally ill patient in the early nineteenth century. The woman’s 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 had a baby. With that, he moves her into a house, completely isolating her from society, and into what she calls a nursery. However, as we learn throughout the rest of the story, it is not actually a nursery, 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, the woman goes insane and sees another 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. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, one can clearly see how the treatment of people with mental illnesses, specifically woman in the nineteenth century, was ignored and neglected due to the status of women in society at this time period. 

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” (16). The woman in Gilman’s story was secluded into a room that was meant for the mentally insane who acted like children. Nowhere in the story does Gilman mention that the woman was fed, bathed, taken care of or given attention, which are all key elements to living a sane life. This is clearly presented in the quote where it talks about how actual treatment of patients was not the number one priority back in this time period. Gilman also does not mention her husband or any other doctor/nurse treating her with company and talking with her about how she is feeling. She was simply put into a room without any care or importance to the people around her. Along with this, the article talks about how, “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” (17). The woman in Gilman’s story was taken to a private house into an isolated room in order to ‘rest’ and stay away from any stimulating activities that would affect her nervous disorder. The woman’s husband, who was a doctor and obviously well-off, decided to put his wife into the nursery in order to keep her from interacting with the world, and her illness a secret. The lower-class patients were put into asylums, which from research and common knowledge, were institutions that were not worried about the well-being, treatment and care of their patients, but more of a place to put people who simply displayed hysteria. After reading this, I am able to see why people were treated like the woman in the story was, of secondary importance and without any consideration. 

The article also talks about how in the late nineteenth century, 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 understanding of mental illnesses was 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. These institutions made them go insane and act crazy because of the way they were isolated from society and lack of human interaction. They were also not properly treated nor 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” (20), 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” (20). This quote goes to show that in Gilman’s story, the generation did not appreciate the fact that mental illnesses were serious problems, and that people actually needed to be cared for and treated outside of institutions and asylums. This lead to the placement of the woman into a confined room for insane patients, because people with these illnesses were not treated, and therefore ended up going crazy because of the isolation and lack of care they received. 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 the woman was put in. She talks about how there were rings on the wall, by which she means there are rings to chain people to the bed, which is bolted to the floor of the bedroom. Every detail about the room screams it is not actually a nursery, but like a prison cell for the people who reach the point of insanity that they have to be chained to the walls and bed. 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” (431). 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 woman in Gilman’s story was obviously not given any medical attention from anyone other than her husband, who we never see or hear about coming in to do anything for her. He was completely uninterested in her treatment and making her better, that within the time she stayed there, she went mentally insane and tried to kill herself because of the lack of interest in her treatment. 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” (432). In the early nineteenth century, if you had a mental illness, doctors and caregivers would push you into doing jobs that would not require you to think. This quote explains that people were basically put into a work environment that was helpless and that would not stimulate their illness, just like the woman was put into the nursery to do nothing. We never hear her doing anything in the room, other than describing the many things she sees in the wall. The fact that they suggested these five things for women with mental illnesses to complete is extremely demeaning and shows they were not looked at as real human beings, but as objects and inmates. The woman 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. All of these examples clearly show how the woman 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 century, specifically women. In Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a woman 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. 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”.
