Dr. Weir Mitchell devised the Rest Cure in the late 1800s. It was a treatment for hysteria and other nervous illnesses. The cure was designed to keep women free of any work, to be isolated for about six to eight weeks, and a lot of bed rest. With the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, enter into a personal world of ‘madness’; a world of ‘torture’, a world of ‘inner turmoil and depression’, a world of ‘imprisonment’. The narrator of this story was herself prescribed the rest cure, and the story follows her through the three months of isolation in a country home. In other words, the story explores the inner working of the mind under specific circumstances. This tale relates to gender division by keeping women in a child-like …show more content…
She says, “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency-- what is one to do?” (Gilman, entry 1) In this journal entry, the narrator is pointing out how her own husband doesn’t think there is really anything wrong with her. She reiterates this more than once throughout the story. She mentions it again in entry two, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.” And again later in entry three she says, “John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.” …show more content…
The first instance of John’s goading in evident in the second journal entry. The wife writes of how upset she was about the upstairs bedroom, for she did not care for the yellow wallpaper. She asks him to repaper the room but he instead tells her “dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental” and though she still wants to move to the room downstairs he calls her “a blessed little goose” and tells her he would move anywhere in the home. Though she eventually says, “I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim (Gilman). The narrator’s retelling of the scene shows John’s manipulative ways. He takes the control in what room she must be in for her isolation and stay at the country home. He makes her second guess herself here, and makes her feel childish for feeling the way she does. At another point in the story, the narrator talks of getting up in the middle of the night to look at the paper. John proceeds to call her ‘little girl’ and chides her for walking around “Don't go walking about like that--you'll get cold.” (Gilman, entry 5) Throughout the story John constantly treats her as a child, and refers to her in a parent like tone. For instance, the narrator recalls a conversation and when she said something he didn’t like and she says “for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I
The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.
The irony between the two characters shows us how the narrator has a false sense of how a marriage should be. “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage” (Gilman 478). It is ironic because in a healthy, normal marriage, no one expects for a husband to laugh at his wife, but the narrator finds it to be completely normal. The narrator truly believes that her marriage is normal and that everything is fine, when in fact her husband has tricked her into going to an abandoned insane asylum in hopes of curing her. Another ironic moment is when John’s course of treatment backfires. John believes that taking his wife to an old asylum and locking her in a bedroom will be the cure for her for her depression, but it does the complete opposite. The narrator states, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman 489). Both John and his sister believed that by isolating the narrator she would eventually become sane, but they failed to realize what was really wrong with her. John’s state of ignorance and his stubbornness lead him to misjudge the situation a...
By closing her off from the rest of the world, he is taking her away from things that important to her mental state; such as her ability to read and write, her need for human interaction, her need to make her own decisions. All of these are important to all people. This idea of forced rest and relaxation to cure temporary nervous problems was very common at the time. Many doctors prescribed it for their female patients. The narrators husband, brother, and their colleagues all feel that this is the correct way to fix her problem, which is practically nonexistent in their eyes. Throughout the beginning of the story, the narrator tends to buy into the idea that the man is always right and makes excuses for her feelings and his actions and words: "It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise and because he loves me so," (23).
All sense of individuality and self worth is taken way from the narrator when her name is never revealed to the audience. Furthermore, John continues to belittle his wife by giving her the command to not walk around at night. Although the John thinks in his mind that he is looking out for the best interest of his wife, in actuality, he is taking away his wife’s abilities to make choices for herself. There is a possibility that John’s controlling personality is one of the factors that led to his wife’s psychosis. Such a controlling life style more than likely limited the narrator’s ability to live any life outside of the home.
John, the husband, serves as a metaphor for masculine views of the time, and for the masculine side of humans, the side of reason and logic. "John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horor of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures" (1658). His character is almost stereotypical in its adherence to reason and its attittude towards his wife. He negates her intuition; "there is something strange about the house - I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window" (1658) He attributes her condition to "a slight hysterical tendency" (1658), which is, etymologically speaking, just a polite way of saying that she is instable due to being a woman. He is not interested in his wife's actual condition, rather in his diagnosis; "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (1659). His best advice is to not use her imagination (though trapped in an ugly room), but to become more reasonable and to resist her condition through willpower. When he does put her to bed and asks her to get well, he asks, not for her own self, but with him as the motivation; "He said [. . .] that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well" (1663).
Being constantly alone and prohibited to leave her bedroom, she begins to start being delusional with nothing to occupy her time, but to write. With “barred windows for little children and rings and things in the walls” the bedroom is in similarity to a prison cell. (page 648). While John is keeping her away from reality, Jane begins to feel as if the right thing and she won’t be able to get out.
...ssion and intrusiveness. John’s lack of having an open mind to his wife’s thoughts and opinions and his constant childish like treatment of his wife somehow emphasizes this point, although, this may not have been his intention. The narrator felt strongly that her thoughts and feelings were being disregarded and ignored as stated by the narrator “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (Gilman 115), and she shows her despise of her husband giving extra care to what he considers more important cases over his wife’s case with a sarcastic notion “I am glad my case is not serious!” (Gilman 115). It is very doubtful that John is the villain of the story, his good intentions towards doing everything practical and possible to help his wife gain her strength and wellbeing is clear throughout the story.
" Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wished he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there" (474). John doesn't know how his wife
The bars on windows, bedstead nailed down, and a gate at the top of the stairs suggest an unsafe place. The narrator’s preference for living in the downstairs room is undermined by John’s control over her. Furthermore, John puts his wife into an environment with no communication, making her socially isolated. The protagonist is home alone most of the time while John is at work. She is not allowed to raise her own baby, and Jennie, John's sister, is occupied with her job.
Although the narrator feels desperate, John tells her that there is “no reason” for how she feels, she must dismiss those “silly fantasies”(166). In other words, John treats her like a child and gives her reason to doubt herself. “Of course it is only nervousness”(162). She decides. She tries to rest, to do as she is told, like a child, but suffers because John does not believe that she is ill. This makes her feel inadequate and unsure of her own sanity.
Throughout the text, the reader clearly sees that John has approached the near imprisonment of his wife with very tender and caring words and actions. He always refers to his “little gooses (Charters 228), his darling, and his dear, and he reads her bed time stories. However, the protagonist, as well as the reader, soon begin to see through this act. John may act as if he simply just cares about his wife, and that is why he is putting her through this. But why then does he not listen when she says that she feels worse rather than better? (Charters 232). Because he is not doing it for her at all. He is far more concerned for his career. He is a physician after all, and to have a mentally and physically unstable wife would be tumultuous for his future in that vocation. So he must lock her away in this vacation, away from civilization, so that no one will know. It seems that the protagonist realizes her husbands motives early on, but she is unwilling to believe what she fears is true. She willingly suspends her disbelief of her husband. She says things such as, “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick” (Charters 231). In these statements she is not trying to communicate an idea to a reader, but rather attempting desperately to convince herself of the idea. Ultimately she succeeds, and this leads to her final mental collapse. Her willing suspension of disbelief causes her to
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has fabricated that includes a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator of this story grows obsessed with the wallpaper in her room because her husband minimizes her exposure to the outside world and maximizes her rest. Academic essayists such as Susan M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Elaine Showalter have a feminist reading of the story, however, this is not the most important reading. The author experienced the turmoil of the rest cure personally, which means that the story is most likely a comment on the great mistreatment of depression, hysteria and mental disorders in general. Despite the claims of Gilbert, Gubar, and Showalter that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is solely feminist propaganda, their analysis is often unnecessarily deep and their claims are often unwarranted, resulting in an inaccurate description of a story that is most importantly about the general mistreatment of psychosis and the descent into insanity regardless of gender.
Gilman shows through this theme that when one is forced to stay mentally inactive can only lead to mental self-destruction. The narrator is forced into a room and told to be passive, she is not allowed to have visitors, or write, or do much at all besides sleep. Her husband believes that a resting cure will rid her of her “slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 478). Without the means to express herself or exercise her mind in anyway the narrator begins to delve deeper and deeper into her fantasies. The narrator begins to keep a secret journal, about which she states “And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief” (Gilman 483)! John tells his wife that she must control her imagination, lest it run away with her. In this way John has asserted full and complete dominance over his wife. The narrator, though an equal adult to her husband, is reduced to an infancy. In this state the narrator begins her slow descent into hysteria, for in her effort to understand herself she fully and completely loses herself.
Even when she tries to describe John as “so careful and loving…” she still has to add that he “hardly lets me stir without special direction” (Gilman 2) by saying this the narrator implies aggravation. Her unhappiness towards male dominance in her marriage causes her to feel “ungrateful” because she is aware of the role she is supposed to happily play. The typical role for a woman to play in her life is to get married, have children, and be a mom and a wife. The narrator's distaste in the nursery could also show that she did not want the child that John and her were expecting. The narrator makes her feelings towards the nursery very clear by saying “I don't like our room a bit” (Gilman 2) and she goes on by using words such as “revolting” and “repellant” to describe the walls in the room.
In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores themes of feminism and inequality. Gilman uses her own life experiences and her struggle with Postpartum depression to create such vivid detail and imagery within her story. Gilman married Charles Stetson after living a very long and lonely childhood. After having children of her own She began struggling with long periods of depression and her husband sought out the advice of a doctor. Weir Mitchell was his name, he popularized the rest cure which Gilman mentions in the short story briefly. "