Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Women of of the 19th century era encountered a distressing period where medicine and their health were prominent highlights associated with their being. To the bewilderment of those today, society of this time believed that it was in a woman's nature to be sick, that a female was born with an illness of both the body and mind, and that nothing could be done to permanently alleviate her sickness. Ultimately this falsehood laid the foundation for the physical and often mental demise of many women. This is very clear in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a short story about a woman's slow descent into insanity while following the physician- prescribed “rest cure" made known to society by nerve disorder specialist, Silas Weir Mitchell

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone” (Gilman 312). Here, it is obvious that the woman's depression is becoming more severe. She makes an effort to talk to her husband regarding her thoughts and is quite aware that the treatment is not working. She attempts to explain to her husband, “I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away" (Gilman 314). Adhering to the principles of the rest cure, she is told to stay in her chambers, interact with no one, and engage in no intellectual thought. She is separated from the world. Undoubtedly the rest cure begins to have an effect that is opposite of what was intended. She examines the walls so closely that she begins to have hallucinations of a "faint figure" behind the pattern of the wallpaper. The woman's feelings of repression by her husband manifest in the hallucinations. Initially the woman begins to see a lady supposedly trapped behind the designs of the yellow wallpaper. This lady is a reflection of the woman's imprisonment in her room and her longing to escape and be her own person. By the end of Gilman's story, the woman gets pushed to her breaking point, tearing pieces of the paper off the walls to free the lady as well as