Female Hysteria In Ernest Hemingway's The Yellow Wallpaper

We’ve all heard of the stereotype that “women are all crazy”, but how did this become about? For centuries, women have dealt with the constant misconception of their own brain and bodies. This misinterpretation, along with a great history of gendered bias, eventually brought about a new term in the early 1800’s - female hysteria. This term was essentially used to put a name to the way woman differentiated from men, since at the time society upheld a male prejudice against women. Despite the fact that all of the symptoms of female hysteria were just normal functions of the female body and sexuality, it was still considered a disease by The American Psychiatric Association until they eventually dropped the term 1952. This leads to the main topic of discussion; female hysteria is not, nor ever was, a true mental illness that women face. It is instead a derogatory umbrella term used to define the way that women simply exist. Or to be more concise, the way women respond to daily pressures and to lessen the gravity of the situation at …show more content…
She was clearly having issues with depression, which lead to depressive psychosis. However, all her symptoms were diagnosed as “female hysteria”, a mental disorder that was only attributed to women. The symptoms for hysteria such as dizziness, irritability, hallucinations, fever, suffocation, and headache are all diverse and may stem from a wide variety of other mental illness. But, due to the preconceived notion that women are hysterical, she was never given the correct cure. Instead the narrator was given a rest cure, which then made things worse, and most certainly did not serve as a cure to her illness. Her misdiagnosis ruined her life, just like the cases of thousands other women who are told that “it’s just all in their head”. The assumption that women are hysterical is more than just untrue. It’s toxic, destructive, and perhaps even