Literary Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essay

Since its publication in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a variety of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost study, it has been regarded as chivalric literature, science fiction, a statement on postpartum depression, having Victorian time-worn attitudes and a journey into the depths of mental illness. More controversial, but curiously overlooked is the topic of the recumb cure and whether Gilmans associations are fact or fiction. Evidence supports Charlotte Gilman may have misrepresented the Weir Mitchell Rest Cure, and pokes more holes in The Yellow Wallpaper.The storys female character is suffering from momentary nervous depression a slight hysterical(1) tendency, and prescribed a rest cure. The treatment enforced absolute bed rest, forbade physical, mental or accessible activities and required total isolation from family and friends. Eventually the lack of stimulation and nail solitude only added to the desolation, and pushed her to the brink of insanity.The Yellow Wallpaper was based on Gilmans personal experience with postpartum depression and treatment accredited by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, pioneer of the Rest Cure. The parallels between her experiences and those of the story are noticeable, as are implications of late nineteenth-century patriarchal and medical attitudes toward women, during that time.As a false story, and nothing else, The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a postpartum woman driven to psychosis by an inept doctor who is also her husband. However, as a fabricated autobiography, it is read as an indictment of the nineteenth-century medical profession and its patriarchal attitudes. by and by the 1973 reissue of The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman directly criticizes Mitchells treatment, saying, the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his paths. She claimed his rest cure brought her perilously near to losing her mind.Mitchells errors by many accounts, far surpass his medical therapies alone. A tenacious male-chauvinist, by todays standards, he was vehemently opposed to women voting, and strongly against higher education. He felt it got in the way of being good wives and mothers, saying there had better be none of it. Womens finest nobleness according to Mitchell, was to be homeful for others.