Theme Of Hysteria In The Yellow Wallpaper

In Charlotte Perkin Gilman's novel, The Yellow Wallpaper, the main character suffers from postpartum depression following the birth of her child. However, it was unknown to people during the time of the victorian era that this disorder existed. Physicians diagnose these women with hysteria which is to be treated with the rest cure. The main character is married to a physician who oversees her treatment daily and makes sure she does not veer off the path to recovery that he plans for her. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist exhibits the negative repercussions of her husband’s solution to “hysteria” reflecting the Victorian era’s cynical value of women. The protagonist must hide her writing which she uses as an outlet for her hysteria …show more content…
The rest cure consisted of primarily lying in bed all day and engaging in activity with the outside word for only two hours a day. “Before beginning treatment, the doctor promised the patient a positive cure provided that she relinquished control to the physician” (Bassuk 3). During the victorian era, women were confined to a certain area for the duration of the day to hide them from society. Physicians hide them from society due to the fact that they believed having them in contract with the outside work would be detrimental to their recovery, those in society would look down upon women who do not have control of their emotions and mental state. “The rest cure was designed for “the businessmen exhausted from too much work, and the society women from too much play” (Shumaker 3). Women were looked at as people who do not contribute to the world, so it was beneficial for physicians to keep them away as a part of their treatment; they were involved in too much play which needed to be controlled. In order to control these women from their play, they were hidden from society and it drove them