In the nineteenth century, women were repressed and controlled by their husbands. They did not have the same rights as men and were primarily considered to be "objects"; especially when they suffered from depression after child birth. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper," the author’s heroine was a literary representation of herself. Gilman stated, “For many years, I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia-and beyond” (Gilman 1). Karen Ford, in her summary of Gilman's story writes, “it is the tale of one woman’s mental breakdown caused specifically by postpartum depression” (Ford 1). Gilman does not use her own name in the story, but has the main character refer to names such as John, her husband, Mary, her nanny, and Jennie, her sister-in-law. These names suggest they are more important than herself during this time of struggle in her life. In the nineteenth century, women were not respected by men when they went through postpartum depression and were confined with such obtuse medical nonsense as “rest cures” that may have driven them to the point of unsuppressed hysteria.
In the nineteenth century there was a so-called remedy for any kind of depression for women which was called the “rest cure.” “In 1887 S. Weir Mitchell treated Charlotte Perkins Gilman (then Stetson) for a nervous breakdown following a postpartum depression and forbade her to write” (Golden 1). The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests she was given this by her husband, John, who completely dominates her. John is also a physician; “the physician is the quintessential man, and his talk, therefore, is the epitome of male discourse” (Ford 1).
Men in those positions were put on pedestals in the nineteenth century. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but a temporary n...