In the late 1800’s, neurologist S. Weir Mitchell developed a “rest cure” specifically used to treat Neurasthenia, depression and anxiety caused by post civil war stresses, in women (Schuster 1). However, this treatment did more harm than good, isolating patients from the outside world. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, illustrates the isolation and mistreatment of a woman by her husband. In this late nineteenth century time period, this abuse was justified by the “rest cure”; as men described it as a means to help rid women of their anxieties. The Yellow Wallpaper portrays the corruption of men in the late 1800’s, as the man in the story uses the “rest cure” as an extenuation for his sexist and abusive acts towards his wife. 

Gilman uses the story of The Yellow Wallpaper to critique nineteenth century marriages and the role of the sexes. Back when The Yellow Wallpaper was written, the story was nothing more than a disturbing horror tale about a woman’s insanity. The sexism was not apparent to many people at this time, the domesticity of women was just the normal way of life. However, with the change of morals and twentieth century ideas, the story now is much more than a spooky fiction. The stereotypical divide of men’s and women’s roles in society is portrayed with the narrator being shut in her home by her husband, John, the physician. John assumes that he is more superior than his wife, and believes she should remain locked up in a room, instead of exposing her to social life. The narrator is “forbidden to work until [she] is well again” even though she believes that “congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good” (Gilman 300). Being a physician, a first class role in society, John believes he is justified to treat his wife using “rest cure” tactics: isolation, deprivation, and constrainment. Gilman uses John to represent men in nineteenth century society, and the absurdity of their controlling and unreasonable actions. 

The location and condition of the narrator’s containment acts as a symbol of the degradation and immaturity that results from her husband’s exploitation and corruption. The narrator’s husband sees no other way to help his wife other than shutting her in a room; which consists of “a smoldering unclean yellow” wallpaper, barred windows, and a nailed down bed that looked as if “it had been through wars” (Gilman 301-303). The bars on the windows are just another symbol of confinement. Often, people are thrown into barred rooms by police officers for committing a crime, not by a spouse for being anxious or depressed. The nailed down bed shows just how deprived the woman is; she can’t even move the little furniture that is available to her. She is treated like a juvenile, being locked in a room like a child in a time out. It is ironic that the history of the bedroom is said to have been used for a nursery. The stripped off wallpaper and scratches in the floor must be from immature, dim-witted children. The old, once child occupied nursery suggests the childishness of the narrator resulting from her confinement. With nothing to do and no way to cope, the narrator is forced to act as a child; imagining people in the walls and obsessing over the changing patterns in the wallpaper as daylight changes to moonlight, and back to daylight again (Gilman 307).  By isolating her in a bare, demolished room and depriving her of psychological and physiological necessities, John only made his wife’s condition worse. 

The narrator’s obvious insanity at the end of The Yellow Wallpaper is a result of her husband’s abuse of the “rest cure”. By treating the narrator’s nervous illness with bed rest and isolation, she was morally, chemically, and physically constrained (Menninger 3). Just like the narrator in this story, many women in the nineteenth century were mistreated for their psychological illnesses. There is scientific proof, which became evident in the 1900’s, that the “rest cure” was abused by psychiatrists and physicians, who at the time were all men (Menninger 2-4). They deprived the women of necessary psychological devices that allowed them to cope and release negative energy. This led the patients to take out aggressive energy on themselves, making their condition worse (Menninger 3). An example of this is evident in The Yellow Wallpaper when the narrator “got so angry [she] bit off a little piece at one corner [of the bed] but it hurt [her] teeth” (Gilman 311). The point of psychiatric treatment is to allow for negative impulses to be projected outward, away from one’s self, but the “rest cure” did the exact opposite (Menninger 3). The narrator’s isolation caused her to get “angry enough to do something desparate…to jump out the window” (Gilman 311). She would risk death by jumping out of a window; the only thing that stopped her from doing so was the bars trapping her inside. The narrator’s situation reflects that of hundreds of other women who were abused and mistreated by men in the late 1800’s. 

The Yellow Wallpaper portrays the negative affects of the “rest cure” and how it was abused when treating Neurasthenia. Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates a hypothetical situation where the abuse of this treatment is suffered by a patient. The mistreatment and neglect by the male figure in the story is what results in the narrator’s insanity. Gilman’s story sends a powerful message by portraying how the “rest cure” was misused and maltreated by physicians, such as the narrator’s husband. She uses the story as an example of the abuse of male dominance, and the stereotypical role of the sexes in the nineteenth century, where women were encouraged to remain in more domestic lifestyles. The Yellow Wallpaper portrays the wrongdoing of many nineteenth century men by emphasizing the horrid, yet common, result of a woman being secluded from the outside world.  
