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

Since its publication in 1892, The colour Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a variety of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost accounting, it has been regarded as medieval literature, science fiction, a statement on postpartum depression, having Victorian patriarchal attitudes and a journey into the depths of mental illness. More controversial, but curiously overlooked is the payoff of the rest 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 yarns female character is suffering from temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical(1) tendency, and prescribed a rest cure. The treatment enforced lordly bed rest, forbade physical, mental or social activities and required total isolation from family and friends. Eventually the lack of stimulation and complete solitude only added to the desolation, and pushe d her to the brink of insanity.The Yellow Wallpaper was based on Gilmans personal experience with postpartum depression and treatment received 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 fictional story, and nothing else, The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a postpartum womanhood driven to psychosis by an inept doctor who is also her husband. However, as a fictional autobiography, it is read as an indictment of the nineteenth-century medical profession and its patriarchal attitudes. after(prenominal) 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 ways. She claimed his rest cure brought her perilously uprise to losing her mind.Mitchells erro rs 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.