Silas Weir Mitchell

Female hysteria was a common disease in Western Europe for hundreds of years. The disease is a representation of physical and psychological symptoms that shift. It originally was thought of as a disease in specifically women that was brought on by the migration of the uterus, but it was quickly discovered that the Uterus did not “migrate.” Physicians and other educated men concluded that hysteria was a cover-up for whatever was bothering their female patients. The diagnosis of hysteria was seen in both men and women, but mainly women, and was understood in many ways under the research of S. Weir Mitchell, other prominent nineteenth-century doctors, and in “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Silas Weir Mitchell was an…

change in appetite, feeling unable to love the baby, lethargy or extreme fatigue, mood swings, irritability, loss of interest in hobbies or usual activities, etc (The Symptoms of Postpartum Depression). “Already susceptible to depression, her symptoms were exacerbated by marriage and motherhood. In her memoir, Gilman reported that when she held her baby, she felt pain rather than happiness” (Semple). Due to this knowledge of how Charlotte felt about her child, the reader can understand why Jane,…

Connecticut. She struggled as a child after her dad abandoned her and her family. Shortly after, Gilman’s mother slowly detached herself from Gilman and her siblings. Gilman than began to spend most of her time at the public library to overcome her feelings of rejection from her parents. According to C.D. Merriman from online-literature, in 1878 Gilman enrolled in Rhode Island School of Design writing articles and poems for many local journals. Just a few months into the marriage of Charles…

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is an exciting, psychological horror tale that portrays the oppression of women by the male gender in the 19th century. It is an exaggerated account of the author’s personal fight against mental illness. Similar to the main character of the short story, Gilman suffered from an extreme case of postpartum depression and was not given the proper treatment or attention necessary to cure it. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in 1892…

happy if they adhered to qualities that included “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity” (35). This was often referred to as the Cult of Domesticity; however, this expectation of women resulted in doctors marginalizing the emotions of women resulting in so called “cures” such as the Rest Cure. Dr. Mitchell’s Rest Cure “enforced bed rest, seclusion and overfeeding,” (Stiles 32) and, “centered on the body as the site of health and disease” (Thrailkill 526). Therefore, the Rest Cure was…

textual clues, Gilman explicitly regards the wife’s condition as neurasthenia. She writes, “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall” (Gilman 650).Weir Mitchell is a shortened name for Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, a physician from Philadelphia who developed the rest cure, the same cure that is prescribed for the wife. (Virginia) Rather than using prescribed drugs, such as phosphates or phosphites and tonic as the wife notes, Dr. Mitchell persuaded his fellow…

The larger Implications at the conclusion of the story (“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman) "The Yellow Wallpaper" it is a semi-autobiographical short story written by Perkins Gilman in which he describes the treatment of women by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell the husband, who was the famous doctor. During the rest of the story, it describes how a woman is submissive and childlike obedience to male-dominated society during this twentieth century. The ending of the story it has some of…

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 and was one of a lineage of feminists and woman suffragist. She suffered postpartum depression after her first child was born and was instructed by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell to undergo “rest care,” a treatment in which she would “live a domestic a life as possible,” keep her children with her always, and have only “two hours of intellectual life a day. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in 1892, as an indictment of the rest cure. In the story,…

narrator is prohibited from exercising her mind in any way, mainly from any source of self-expression. Due to this, the narrator is forced to keep a secret journal, which is her only source of emotional and intellectual freedom. However, her husband continuously warns her about the “dangers” of writing and tells her she needs to control her imagination. This can be seen when the narrator is writing in her journal and hears her husband coming, and states “I must put this away - he hates to have…

In “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” Jane is shut away from her family and any other possible supportive people in the far end of a rented estate, and she is alone for the majority of her days in the ironically notable “nursery” as characterized on page 559 (Goyette). Because of the lack of psychological knowledge in this time period, Jane’s family was actually doing the opposite of what she needed in order to heal. This could very well be a reason why her postpartum depression worsened throughout the…