What Is Jane's Treatment In The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells us a story of a woman who at the hands of a patriarchal society went insane. Jane is a woman who is being told by her husband and brother that she needs to have treatment for her health. They want her to do the rest cure where she does nothing but rest. Jane does as they say since they’re physicians and men while she’s just a woman living in a male-dominated society. This type of treatment and her life being controlled by the men in her life eventually would lead to her mental health deteriorating. In the 19th century, the practice of psychology and mental health was barely beginning. The type of medicine and therapy used today was completely different from the types of treatments that were used back then. A popular treatment used especially for women was the rest cure. It was created by Silas Weir Mitchell. The treatment involved the patient to have little to none stimuli. The patient was made to

Her obsession with the woman in the wallpaper just becomes bigger and more concerning. Gilman makes the obsession apparent in these lines, “I've seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping” (10). She doesn’t sleep and watches the woman crawl all night. She begins seeing the woman outside, running and hiding whenever she might be spotted by someone. She even starts acting like the woman when she’s in the wallpaper. Golden says “As the muted pattern becomes dominant to the narrator, her delusions translate into actions of madness… She sees the woman behind the wallpaper creeping and begins to creep herself” (31). This shows her progression further into insanity. The rest cure is giving her so little stimuli that she invented a woman in the wall and became obsessed over yellow wallpaper as to have some form of