What Is Jane's Allusion In The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman who is suffering from temporary nervous depression after giving birth to her child. She is told by her husband John and her brother, who are both physicians, to get some rest and stay away from any kind of physical activity. Neither of the men believes that anything is wrong with her. Since they are both physicians of “high standing” she doesn’t know what else to do except to go through with their practices (Gilman 85). She is practically imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom that used to be a nursery. The woman is to stay isolated in this room until she gets well. She can sense there is something odd about the house and even mentions her concern to her husband

Gilman references Dr. S. Weir Mitchell who “was an American neurologist and author who advocated ‘rest cures’ for nervous illnesses” (90). Jane explains that if she doesn’t get well soon enough, John plans on sending her off to Mitchell for further treatment. After doing some research, I found out that Gilman herself actually suffered from a serious “breakdown after the birth of her only child, Katharine” (Catherine Golden 1). Not only did she suffer like the way Jane did, but she actually was sent to “stay in the Philadelphia sanitarium of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell” (Golden 1). According to Heidi M. Silcox, Mitchell’s practices consisted of “six to eight weeks of complete bedrest whereby the patient could not sit up, feed herself, read, or write” (1). Silcox also explains that Gilman was also “to be completely isolated from familiar human contact, including her family” (1). To make matters even worse, Gilman “was to receive massages and electricity in order to keep her muscles from atrophying” (Silcox 1). Dr. S. Weir Mitchell only allowed Gilman to “engage in two hours of intellectual work a day, which almost caused her to go completely insane” (Silcox 1). Gilman is a prime example of how unproductive Mitchell’s practices were and that isolation only made the women worse. Gilman wrote an article explaining why she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” saying that it was “intended to convince Mitchell to change his treatment of nervous disorders” (Silcox 1). It’s crazy to look back at the short story now knowing that Gilman was actually telling an extremely dark twist to her own