Introduction to The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that follows the narrator, Jane, who goes away to a nice estate far away from home with her husband to try and recover from her “nervousness”. She is forced to stay in a strange little room in the attic with bars on the window, rings on the walls, and most importantly a strange yellow wallpaper. While there, she is made to stay in bed all day and is forbidden from writing or anything of the sort. Throughout the story the narrator, Jane, becomes infatuated with the yellow wallpaper, this paired with her isolation and oppressive treatment from her husband, who is serving as her doctor, drives her insane to the point she loses her identity.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of The Yellow Wallpaper, published this short story in 1891. Gilman, an American author and early supporter of the feminist movement, initially received some backlash for this story. The editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Horace Elisha Scudder, would comment on the idea of printing the short story after having read it himself, saying “I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself!” (Gilman, 119).
However, at the time of release she did also receive some praise for the story’s intense aspects of horror and realistic depiction of insanity. This was seen in a recollection written by Gilman of why she wrote the short story, where she stated that a “physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen.” (Gilman)
However, each side of the spectrum, whether with a negative or positive reaction to this story, would neglect the real meaning of the story. They failed to see that it was a representation of what the “rest cure” does to women, written by Gilman as a response to Gilman’s own experience with the rest cure after struggling with post-partum depression.
The Rest Cure
The rest cure was a type of treatment for women with neurasthenia from the late 1870’s to the early 1920’s. Neurasthenia was a condition characterized by fatigue, headaches, irritability, and emotional disturbances. Nowadays neurasthenia can be split into different diagnoses such as chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, in the case of the yellow wall paper, post partum depression being labeled as a nervousness for Jane, the narrator. Some notable women who underwent the rest cure were of course, Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself, and also Virginia Woolf.
The “cure” itself was anything but an actual cure. Pioneered by Silas Weir Mitchell, the cure aimed to calm the mind, limit physical activity, and return women to more “feminine” domestic roles. The idea was that their condition was caused by overstimulation or overuse of the mind and that by undergoing the rest cure they would become healthy again.
The rest cure called for laying in bed for almost all hours of the day, sometimes for months at a time. During their supposed treatment, women would be forced to drink milk for the first week and “if milk was not tolerated, 18 or more raw eggs per day” in the hopes of gaining weight, which Dr. Mitchell believed was an important part of recovery (Martin). Additionally, for fear of stimulating their minds, women were not allowed to see friends or much of their family, and they were forbidden from writing, reading, or drawing. Looking back, the rest cure is obviously not the treatment the women needed, however at the time this “cure” was very expensive. This meant that only the affluent could afford it. For those who couldn’t afford the rest cure “these women often ended up in public asylums, or received no care at all,” a sad reality at the time (Perreault).
Something important to note was that the rest cure was only used on women, men who were diagnosed with neurasthenia were treated very differently.
The “West Cure”
The West cure, also pioneered by Dr. Mitchell, completely juxtaposes the rest cure. While the rest cure, for women, focused on being domestic, bed ridden, fattened up, and left in solitude without any stimulation, the west cure, for men, focused on exploring, physical activity, and journaling. It is important to note that these cures were both for the same condition, neurasthenia, the only difference for prescribing one over the other was the sex of the individual. Some notable men who underwent the west cure are Walt Whitman, Owen Wister, and even president Theodore Roosevelt.
The west cure was characterized by travel out to the Western U.S. and sometimes Canada, where Dr. Mitchell encouraged men to “engage in vigorous physical activity…and to write about the experience” (Stiles). While Dr. Mitchell worked with neurasthenic women to calm and relax their nervous systems from being overstimulated, Mitchell believed that “neurasthenic men could strengthen their nervous systems by engaging in “a sturdy contest with Nature” (Stiles). Something worth mentioning is that Dr. Mitchell actually would often undertake the west cure himself, it is said that he would go West “nearly every year” (Stiles).
The differences in treatment for the same condition just emphasize the sexist nature of medicine and stereotypes that women faced at the time. These treatments perpetuated the sexist stereotypes, as women were seen as weaker needing rest and to be domestic and tranquil, while men were encouraged to strengthen themselves physically and mentally through exploration.
How Understanding the Rest Cure Impacts the Text
Learning about the rest of the cure aids in the understanding of the reading by giving background on what treatment the narrator is actually receiving throughout the story. For example when the narrator writes “I must put this away, — he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman, 3). Without the context of the rest cure this could be excused as something that her husband just does not want her to do, however with the knowledge on the subject we know that while undergoing the rest cure writing would be forbidden by their doctors. Interpreting this quote now, we can see that the rest cure held a strong opposition to women’s creative liberties, and this reflects how at the time, women’s creativity and independence was seen as threatening in the patriarchal society.
Additionally, understanding the rest cure allows us to see what the horror aspect really was in this story. When this story first came out people praised it for its aspects of horror as the narrator descended into madness, however, now we see that the real horror was the treatment itself. This is shown through the use of fear when discussing the treatment, like when the narrator wrote that “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall” (Gilman, 4). The narrator’s rational fear of being sent to the father of the rest cure, Dr. Mitchell, shows how the real scary part of the story was how women were treated for, what are now see as, such widely recognized conditions. Knowledge on the rest cure allows us to see how Gilman was highlighting the misogyny of these treatments. The narrator, based on Gilman’s experiences, was simply going through post-partum depression after having her child, and as a result she was stripped of her autonomy and subjected to what can only be seen as a form of psychological torment. This misogyny can be further seen with this new knowledge on the rest cure now because we know that if the narrator was a man who had a bout of depression, he would not have been subjected to such horrid treatments. In fact, he would have been sent to have much better experiences and would have been allowed vastly more autonomy.
After learning about the rest cure we can also see that Gilman’s depiction of the women stuck behind the walls were a representation of the women stuck in the oppressive and patriarchal medical system. Overall, with further knowledge on the rest cure, more nuanced aspects of the text referring to misogyny and mistreatment of women become much more apparent and understandable.
Works Cited
