
From before the Civil War until the mid-nineteen hundreds, women were seen to be mothers and wives and that was the end of that story. They were to get married and have kids and take care of the home. As times went on, women such as Gilman and many other women began to get an education and read and write and have small jobs outside of the home. During this time medicine was not what it is today, so many mental illnesses were categorized into this hysteria or nervous depression and thought to be because the women did not get enough rest, especially if they worked outside of the domestic home. In Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator is put on bed rest after being diagnosed with what was seen as "temporary nervous depression", and it eventually made her go insane (Gilman); by knowing what the Rest Cure is, what it did to women of the time, and to Gilman herself, the readers can better understand how this cure to the narrators anxiety made her react in the way that she did. 

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator is given Weir Mitchell's rest cure by her husband who is physician to help with what her husband saw as nervous depression. The Rest Cure developed by Silas Weir Mitchell after, put women on strict and absolute rest and isolation for six to eight weeks at a time to "cure" their nervous diseases (Blackie 60-61). These women were forced to eat foods that would make them gain weight and use massage to keep their muscles stimulated and the blood flowing (Blackie 61). They were nonetheless prisoners. The narrator's husband represents Weir Mitchell in this story in his prescribed cure for his wife's nervous depression. She is put in a room and told to do absolutely nothing but rest. She could not write or go anywhere; she is a prisoner in her own rental home (Gilman 208-209). Knowing exactly what the rest cure is and the way the patients were treated by Weir Mitchell's cure helps the reader better understand what the narrator was put through while she is undergoing this cure. The reader can now understand the extremity of the cure and how it had affected the narrator and many other women of the time. 

The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" was a woman who enjoyed activities outside of the domestic home; "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me some good" (Gilman 209). Due to this rest cure, she was not supposed to be writing; she was supposed to do absolutely nothing except eat and rest. While some women reacted well to the rest cure and came back from it a new and improved person, many like the narrator were traumatized by it. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," she cannot do even the simplest of tasks like go outside for a walk or take care of her baby. Because of this she secretly turns to writing; some of this writing is about her husband and how he treats her, but as the story goes on, she focuses more and more on the wallpaper. As she focuses more on the wallpaper, the reader can see her sanity quickly declining (Gilman). For many women, the Weir Mitchell cure helped them and transformed them in healthy young women again (Poirier 18). While this was true for some women, others much like the narrator did not take well to the isolation of the rest cure; it became imprisonment much like in "The Yellow Wallpaper." When these women did not listen to his therapeutic cure, he described a much bitter medicine. Weir Mitchell himself described it as "the rest I like for them is not at all their notion of rest ...  When they are bidden to stay in bed a month, and neither to read, write, nor sew ...  then rest becomes for women a rather bitter medicine, and they are glad enough to accept the order to rise and go about" (Poirier 22-23). Meaning that when these women refused to or could not live out a domestic life as he told them, he prescribed them a more punitive rest to make them enjoy the domestic life. This made women who heard these stories terrified of visiting Weir Mitchell. Gilman shows this fear through the narrator when she is not getting better as fast as her husband would like. "John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!" (Gilman 213). The reader can feel the fear in her voice as if this is a horrible ultimatum for her to recover faster. Gilman shows every aspect as to what it was like to get that option from the husband through the narrator's reaction to John's statement. Knowing that this is fictional autobiography helps the readers better understand and look at this woman as a real person going through serious things at a time where it was seen to be next to nothing. It shows connections and symbolism between the narrator and the wallpaper to Gilman and her struggles in life, but also connects Weir Mitchells harsh patriarchal ways of curing mentally ill women. 

Some women at this time who were supposed to live domestic lives but could not without a nervous depression were sent to Weir Mitchell to be "cured." Some allowed themselves to be cured, but the narrator in "The Yellow Paper" and Gilman only became worse much like many women at the time. Although the women put through this and did not allow themselves to recover were seen as impossible to cure and the "rule-breakers" to Weir Mitchell himself. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written to show Weir Mitchell exactly what his cure did to some and the error in his ways. 
