The medical field and their practices are constantly evolving and trying to create new more innovated ways to safely help people with their illnesses.  In the past hundred years the world has comes leaps and bounds with the treatments that are used to help people with their diseases.  One medical field that has become more widely researched and the techniques have changed immensely is the mental health field.   Only a hundred years ago cocaine was regarded as an amazing drug to help battle depression, this shows how different mental health is approached in the present.  Another radical method to help cure people of their mental health illnesses, specifically hysteria, was the resting cure.  In Charlotte Perkins Gilmores’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts, from a women perspective, what the resting cure is actually like.  The story takes place in a secluded summer home, where the woman, who is unnamed throughout the story, secretly writes about her time spent at this house.  Her husband, John, diagnosed her with “temporary nervous depression” (300), and as a method of treatment he suggest the resting cure.  She can do very little physical activity and no intellectual activity, such as writing so she must do it in secrete,  John wants her to spend her time in bed either sleeping or resting.  This short story shows the unfair treatment of women in the late 19th century and shows the madness that this treatment ultimately drove women to.

From the beginning of the text, the superior nature of the narrator’s husband is shown through gendered subtext.  The story starts off with the narrator describing the home that they are going to live in for the summer and expressing that she believes there is something off about the home.  She asks many questions about the home like, “Why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?” the narrator observes that her husband, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (299).  The narrator does not express any discontent towards her husband in this instance and is fine with his reaction to her comments.  As a reader his actions are disheartening because he is putting down his wife, he also disvalues her feelings by laughing at them.  This statement and her reaction is saddening to read because she believes that it is normal for her husband to react to her in this type of way.   The narrator believes that a characteristic of marriage is that a man is able to laugh and belittle her emotions, and not be more considerate. Her views of marriage from the first couple lines of the story make it apparent that she views her husband as superior in a lot of ways to her.

The narrator makes clear that her husband and brother believe that she is suffering from temporary nervous depression, and because of her condition, which leads her to believe that she is not a good enough wife to her husband.  She is being treated with the resting cure which means she is unable to do work of any kind, including writing or doing anything intellectual, she is able to do some exercise but she mostly she sleeps all day.  By being treated with the resting cure she is unable to perform traditional wifely duties around the home.  The narrator expresses her discontent with herself, “It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I m a comparative burden already!”(301). She sees herself as an incomplete person with no purpose in her life.  Being treated in this type of method it has stripped her of her identity as a mother and a wife.  For this time period most women were expected to have families and to care for them.  Her expectations of her and what society expects her to do are being impeded on there by deteriorating her self-worth and purpose.  

Women around the world have been seen as unequal’s to their male counterpart.  In an article written by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese called “Women’s Status: A century for Enormous Change” she writes about the evolving social status of women throughout the 20th century.  In the beginning she discusses the inequalities that women faced in the early 20th century which is around when the “Yellow Wall Paper”.  The paper states that, “White American women lacked many of the rights that their male in could claim as their birthright:  They could not vote in federal elections;… they were denied access to many educational institutions and occupations;… and if they married, their rights to hold property in their own name were restricted” (Fox-Genovese).  This passage of text relates to the story because it shows how detrimental losing her self-worth is.  Women were not allowed to do many things, as the quote says but the one place that they dominated and had a sense of control of was the household.  At the time that was their domain and the narrator being unable to be affective and useful in this manner, means she has nothing else to really do.

The unfair and oppressive behavior towards women ultimately leads to the main characters slow descent to madness.  Her cut off from intellectual activity and her freedom being stripped away from her made her wallow in her own thoughts about the room that she spent most of her time in.  She has to spends all of her time around the wallpaper that it has completely fixated her as she lays in her bed,” for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.  On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is constant irritant to a normal mind”(306).  Her lack of connection to things around her that made her happy has made her obsessed with the wallpaper.  The resting cure has given her nothing to do but sit and stare at this wall paper which is making her imagine things about what the paper is doing.  The belief at this time that women were weak and the only way to fix them was by making them do nothing, is making the narrators life more miserable.  At this point in the story she has not completely lost her min but her obsession with the wall paper has grown, and she is starting to become mad.

As the narrator spends more time resting her obsession grows, and her mind become lost, which can be deducted as her writing becomes more frantic.  Her madness become self-consuming and as she believes the wallpaper is trapping a woman behind its pattern.  The narrator started the story as a sane woman, who was being forced to rest all the time under the authority of her brother and husband, to one that has completely lost herself.  The story is from the perspective of the women so in order to show the reader that the character is becoming more obsessive and frantic about the wallpaper the tone and writing style changes.  The story picks up again with her writing:

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I’ll tell you why-privately- I’ve seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same women, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight

Her well written and descriptive sentences that she wrote in the beginning of the chapter have changed to short frantic so how fixated she is on the wall paper.  Also when she uses “privately” its concerning because this story is a recount of her situation that no one else is able to read, her madness is making her distrusting of everyone around her and even in her own thought she believes people are watching her.

The madness that the narrator ultimately succumbs to is not a anomaly for this type of treatment but happened to many women who were prescribed the resting cure.  A journal entry from a women named Julia Mueller was published in The American Journal of Nursing recounted her time in a hospital undergoing treatment for being “a little nervous”, and being prescribed the resting cure as a way to cure it.  In the beginning of the journal entry the patient makes sure to tell the audience that she is fine and she repeats what the doctors tell her she has, “I’m alright I am.  Sure I am I’m fine I am.  I’ve been a little nervous but I’m alright now. I’m having a rest cure.  That’s what they tell me”(Mueller).  Starting off in this kind of ways creates doubt and some skepticism from the audience.  It seems that she is only repeating what the doctor are saying to her and is almost trying to convince herself that this is the right treatment for her.  By the end of the journal you truly see her start to break much like the narrators decent in to madness.  The writer of this entry ends it with saying, “I’m calm… I’m swell... I’m not screaming… I’m resting”(Mueller).  This journal entry shows that the narrator madness was common for most women to fall victim to, because of this oppressive inhumane treatment that was normal for women at the turn of the century.

Charlotte Perkins Gilmore’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was an inspiring piece at the turn of the century that brought light to the discriminatory treatment of women at the time.  The author shows the sexism and the madness of the main character through gendered subtext, and changing the tone of the writing.  This story was written at a time were the oppression of women was every day, Gilmore’s story helped shape new opinions of treatments that are viable and humane to help women suffering from mental disorders.
