Exploring Rest Cure Therapy in The Yellow Wallpaper
Rest was used as a cure for neurasthenia, but did it really work? "The Yellow Wallpaper" explores the concept of rest cure therapy and its effectiveness on a woman patient. The best-known doctor for treating neurasthenia was a highly regarded neurologist named Silas Weir Mitchell (Kivo 8). Women from all over the world traveled to the United States to be treated by Silas Weir Mitchell (5). Rest cure therapy included secluding the patient from family and friends and complete physical and intellectual rest (5). Many women who followed Mitchell's treatment plan returned to their families cured, but there were some women whose symptoms became worse after being treated by Mitchell or after being restricted to bed rest.
Many women did not benefit from rest. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Jane, the protagonist, is put on bed rest after giving birth to her baby. She is prescribed bed rest from her doctor and husband, John (6). John secludes her from family and friends by renting a rundown country home for the summer (6). She is to have total bed rest while at the country home. John said that Jane "was to have perfect rest" (Gilman, 14). As the summer progresses, Jane's condition becomes increasingly worse, and she begins to hallucinate. She thinks that she sees things moving on the yellow wallpaper in the room that she is staying in. Jane says, "The pattern does move-and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!" (23). The therapy causes Jane to retreat into madness (Kivo 6). Jane's madness becomes apparent when the woman behind the wall and Jane start to tear all the yellow wallpaper from the walls of the room (25). Jane's condition deteriorate...
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...herapy. Rest cures did not always work on all women. There were some patients like Jane who became worse while others like Addams and Gilman had to find their own ways of suppressing or curing their depression. Depression, or neurasthenia, was not always curable and has affected many people all over the world. While rest cures were the most common cure for depression, sometimes this procedure was not effective.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Harcourt Brace Casebook Series in Literature. Ed. Carol Kivo.Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1998. 13-27.
Kivo, Carol, ed. "The Yellow Wallpaper:" The Harcourt Brace Casebook Series in Literature. Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1998. 2-12.
Poirier, Suzanne. "The Weir Mitchell rest cure: doctor and patients." Women's Studies. 1983 10(1): 15-40. <Galileo online>
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 2011. Print.
The medical profession’s godlike attitude in “The Yellow Wallpaper” demonstrates this arrogance. The Rest cure that Dr. Weir Mitchell prescribed, which is mentioned in Gilman’s work, reflects men’s disparaging attitudes. His Rest cure calls for complete rest, coerced feeding and isolation. Mitchell, a neurosurgeon specializing in women’s nervous ailments, expounded upon his belief for women’s nervous conditions when he said,
Due to the narrators condition she is “forbidden to “work” until…” (Gilman 478) she is well. She is a writer but she is not allowed to do what she loves because of the medical regimen her husband put her on. This regimen was known as the “rest cure” (Mays 478) created by Silas Weir Mitchell. The “rest cure” included a regimen of “enforced bedrest, seclusion and overfeeding” (Stiles 32). The creator of this cure, Mitchell, had another cure for men called the “west cure” (Stiles 32). The “west cure” had activities such as hunting and cattle roping. Mitchell displays through these two cures, the difference between men and women. Women get the regimen of staying in the home and doing as little work as possible, whereas men had to go outside of the home and do “manly”
The narrator, referred to as Jane, has been suffering from what her husband, who is a physician, believes is a “temporary nervous depression.” He prescribes a “rest cure”
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. The New England Magazine. Reprinted in "Lives & Moments - An Introduction to Short Fiction" by Hans Ostrom. Hold,
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 354-65. Print.
“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.
The famous Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1 to July 3 of 1863 in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle proved to show the most casualties of the entire war and resulted in a crushing defeat of the Confederates. The Battle of Gettysburg is generally considered to be the turning point of the American Civil War. This paper will demonstrate the various reasons as to why the Confederates, led by General Robert E. Lee, were unsuccessful in the Battle of Gettysburg during their invasion of the north. General Lee’s over-confidence, the confederate army’s disorganization and failed coordination, and the shift of intelligence all contributed to the crushing defeat of the confederates at Gettysburg. Following his “flawless” battle at Chancellorsville, General Lee was instilled with absolute confidence in his men and failed to see any deficiencies in his army’s offensive capabilities. Lee was not only over-confident, but also knew less than his opponent during the most crucial stages of the battle. The final contributing factor as to why the confederates were defeated was Alexander’s failure to provide effective artillery bombardment and his failure to advise General Pickett not to make the charge after the ineffective bombardment.
Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature a World of Writing: Stories, Poems, Plays, and Essays. Ed. David Pike, and Ana Acosta. New York: Longman, 2011. 543-51. Print.
------. "The Writing of 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Double Palimpsest." Studies in American Fiction. 17 (1989): 193-201.
Wohlpart, Jim. American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” 1997. Florida Gulf Coast University
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature for Composition: Reading and Writing Arguments about Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 8th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 765-75. Print.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 2011. Print.
However, it is important to first fully understand the act of prescribing the resting cure and its intentions and mannerisms. The story states that the husband is a physician, and that he doesn’t believe that his wife is truly sick, only sick with a “temporary nervous depression”, and therefore she must rest for the majority of the day (Gilman 237). This was a common diagnosis of the time period, first given by a physician called Dr. Silas Mitchell (Feluga). The administration of this treatment began with Dr. Mitchell’s time as a contract surgeon during the Civil War where he gave men who were injured and suffering from signs of hysteria a strict regimen of rest and nutrition, involving “rest, a fattening diet, massage, and electricity”(Feluga). This led to him to taking this treatment to his patients, who were typically…”nervous women, who as a rule [were] thin, and lack[ed] blood” (Mitchell 9). The treatment received by his patients was forceful, sometimes involving force-feeding through other orifices if they refused to comply with the heavy diet (Poirier). Judging by the nature of the treatment and the number of first-hand accounts about the horrors of the treatments, it can be inferred that the resting cure was not only a falsely believed treatment, but also a method of controlling those diagnosed with ‘hysteria’, or any number of nervous diseases. Having to lay in
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" The Harbrace Anthology of Literature. Ed. Jon C. Scott, Raymond E. Jones, and Rick Bowers. Canada: Nelson Thomas Learning, 2002. 902-913.