The Deeper Meaning of The Yellow Wallpaper

The “rest cure” was a common treatment for depression in women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Women were locked in a room involuntarily and forced to “rest.” The patient was locked in a room and not allowed to leave or function in any type of way. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper is subjected to this cure. The story is written to expose the cruelty of the “resting cure”. Gilman uses the wall paper to represent the narrators sense of entrapment, the notion of creativity gone astray, and a distraction that becomes an obsession.

Gilman’s purpose for writing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was to make Dr. Mitchell’s bogus cure known. She wanted to make sure no other woman was diagnosed and treated in the same way she was. She states that “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “Was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked”(Gilman 20). Dr. Mitchell is said to have discontinued his “rest cure” after reading Gilman’s story. Gilman’s bold approach of writing on such a controversial topic most likely came from her upbringing. Her father had a profession of a magazine editor, so she spent most of her time with her great aunts. Cathrine Beecher was best known for her views on “domestic feminism.” Isabella Beecher Hooker was an eager suffragist, and avid supporter of women’s right to vote. Gilman’s most well known aunt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, is the author of bestselling, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The essay, "Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was written primarily for the purpose of explaining the meaning and reasoning behind her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper". Before stating these reasons, Gilman explains that she had been suffering from a "severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond" (Gilman, 1913). After three years of this torment, she decided to go see a specialist in nervous diseases. The doctor she went to was named Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell advised Gilman to be put to bed and to apply the rest cure, along with living a domestic life with limited amount of intellectual interaction and to never "touch pen, brush, or pencil again" (Gilman, 1913). As intimidating as this sounded, Gilman took the advise of her doctor, and followed his every suggestion for about three months. She had reached a point of almost complete mental ruin at the end of these three months, that she had to cast aside the specialist's advice. Instead of following his instructions, she began to work again. Ultimately, this is when and where "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” a short story about a mentally ill women,written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at age 32, in 1892 is a story with a hidden meaning and many truths. Charlotte Perkins Gilman coincidentally also had a mental illness and developed cancer leading her to kill herself in the sixties. The story begins with Jane, the mentally ill woman who feels a bit distressed, and although both of the well respected men in her life are physicians she is put simply on a “rest cure”. This rest cure as well as many symbols such as the Yellow Wallpaper, her journal, and her inevitable breakdown are prime examples of the typical life of a woman in this time period and their suppressed lives that they lived even with something as serious as a

Mitchell was predisposed to think that women did not need to leave there bed or even their homes when they were ill. The rest cure also exacerbated normal gender roles of that era. Men were the ones who belonged in the outside world; they were the bread winners. Men needed to be outside of the home and to take care of the needs of everyone in it. In contrast, women were supposed to inside the home of take care of the home. Dr. Mitchell ensures men were not feeling emasculated by being subject to the same treatment as women and be subject to their homes where they felt only women were supposed to be. The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman, highlight the mental distress that the rest cure tolls on your mental state. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” because of her experience on the rest cure and she wanted to “save people from being driven crazy”. Another reason that Gilman could have written the short story is to show that women need intellectual stimulation as much as men and that living domestically and not doing things that express a person’s creative side could drive them insane.

In an article titled, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman talks about her personal experience with the rest cure, also denouncing the diagnosis as a whole. “For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond.”(Gilman). While this ailment would not be handled as heavily today, Gilman would actually be subject to the rest cure by Silas Weir Mitchel himself. Mitchel would tell Gilman to “live as domestic a life as far as possible”, “(to) have but two hours intellectual life a day”, and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again.” Like the fate of her stories protagonist, the treatment would almost drive Gilman

"The Yellow Wallpaper," is a larger-than-life version of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experiences. She grieved for several years in depression, as her physician diagnosed her with “neurasthenia” and prescribed the "rest cure" seen in the story. Unable to write or seek company, Gilman's rest drove her insane for three months. Gilman wrote the story not simply to change one man's view of neurasthenia, but to utilize the floor as a symbol of the oppression of women in a patriarchal society as mentioned in her article “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”.

Not only did the rest cure therapy not work for Jane, it did not work for other prominent women suffering from neurasthenia, the same condition as Jane. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper", and Jane Addams, a woman's advocate of the early nineteen hundreds, were among the few who did not respond in a positive manner to rest cure therapy. The families of Gilman and Addams protested his treatment when the woman did not get well after being under Mitchell's care (Poirier 15). Mitchell believed that with food and rest, the body could gain weight, therefore, replenishing red blood cells and curing the patient (18). Mitchell also believed that "the best cure for female neurasthenes was to reorient them to domestic life" (19). In order for the rest cure to work, patients were secluded from family and friends and they were not allowed to read, write, sew, or sit up in bed (20). Many of Mitchell's patients went home "cured" by his terms (23). Some of the women were not as lucky.

After learning of Gilman’s personal story, it becomes apparent that “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and the struggle of its narrator, carries a distinct message. Gilman grew up in an unhappy and impoverished family with a brother, a single mother, and no father figure. She later went on to marry Charles Stetson (whom she later divorced) and had a daughter with him. After the birth of her daughter, Gilman fell into a deeply depressed state, indicating the relevance of postpartum depression. When she consulted Dr. Weir Mitchell about it, she was prescribed a “rest cure.” It was this event that inspired Gilman to write “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and many similarities can be drawn between

For centuries women in literature have been depicted as weak, subservient, and unthinking characters. Before the 19th century, they usually were not given interesting personalities and were always the proper, perfect and supportive character to the main manly characters. However, one person, in order to defy and mock the norm of woman characterization and the demeaning mindsets about women, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper." This story, through well crafted symbolisms, brought to surface the troubles that real women face. Her character deals with the feeling of being trapped by the expectations of her husband, with the need to do something creative or constructive, and to have a mind and will of her own. These feelings

Her father abandoned her mother and left her with two children to raise on her own. She moved a lot during childhood, which resulted in not having stability. The lack of stability manifested in many ways. However men thought traumatic events could be forgotten and gotten over later in life. So when she visited the very distinguished doctor in the field of nervous diseases, he sent her on her way and instructed her to nothing it was a method called the rest cure. He said she was over manipulated and need to be secluded far away and lay in a room and not do anything! She was to stay away from pencils, and paint and any strenuous activities. She said three months of this solitaire confident she was driven mad. Later in Gilman’s life she committed suicide on August

My perspective of Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is influenced by a great number of different and diverse methods of reading. However, one cannot overlook the feminist theorists’ on this story, for the story is often proclaimed to be a founding work of feminism. Further, the historical and biographical contexts the story was written in can be enlightened by mentioning Gilman’s relationship with S. Weir Mitchell. And I can’t help but read the story and think of Foucault’s concept of Panopticism as a method of social control. Lastly, of course, there’s the psychological perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the

Charlotte Perkins Gilman suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her child. This goes on to affect many aspects of her life for years. During this time she gets placed in a mental hospital and prescribed the rest cure. Gilman was told to “have but two hours' intellectual life a day, and never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” (Gilman par. 2). She obeys the orders for months, which drives her to the brink of insanity. Her mental state worsened while on the so-called cure. Gilman has the ability to escape the clutches of illness before all hope remains lost. She returns to “the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service” (Gilman par. 4) and has the compulsion to share her story through “The

Gilman wrote her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892 after undergoing S. Weir Mitchell’s, a popular neurologist of the 19th century, “rest cure” treatment where she was to “live a domestic life as possible” (Perkins. 4). Through her short story Perkins utilizes gothic fiction, a type of horror fiction, to vocalize her private and personal traumatic experience so that no other woman would have to. The format of the story is written from the perspective of a woman with an unnamed nervous condition, who writes a collection of journal entries to record her daily thoughts, while she is being treated for her

       Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" has been viewed as either a work of supernatural horror or as a feminist treatise regarding the role of women in society. A close analysis of Gilman's use of symbols reveals "The Yellow Wallpaper" as her response to the male view of hysteria from ancient times through the nineteenth century. " In "The Yellow Wallpaper" Gilman questions the validity of Hippocrates's theory of the wandering uterus and Weir Mitchell's "rest cure". As she wrote in her essay "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper?", "[the story] was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy…" (107). By her own