The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrait of a woman's downward spiral into madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in 1800. The narrator, whose name remains unnamed, represents the hundreds of upper-middle-class women diagnosed with hysteria and prescribed "rest" treatment. Even though Gilman's story was a heroic attempt to “save people from going crazy” (Gilman p 1), with this kind of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800s and “perhaps the only way they could (subconsciously) resist or protest their traditional 'feminine' labor or overwork” (Chesler p 11) going crazy. To understand the psychology of the story, the reader must understand this type of diagnosis of nineteenth-century women and the supposed cure. This treatment, created by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, was a prescription for almost total inactivity and isolation. “Passivity was the main prescription, along with hot baths, cold baths, abstinence from animal foods and spices, and indulgence in milk, puddings, cereals, and 'subacid delicate fruits'” (Ehrenreich and English p 49). Gilman herself was treated by Dr. Mitchell and underwent the same treatment as the heroine of the story. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so readily that he concluded that nothing much was happening to me, and sent me home with the solemn advice to "live a life the as domestic as possible", to "have only two hours of intellectual life a day" and to "never touch pen, brush or pencil again" along...... half of the paper......s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: a Poetics of the Interior p 12) John ends up fainting. He came to the conclusion that his wife had mistaken submission for madness. Bibliography: “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Poetics of the Inside, May 8, 2000 http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/snyder.htmChesler, Phyllis “When They Call You Crazy” CHOICES, Women's Medical Center, Inc Vol III, 6 June 1994 p 9-14) Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deirdre Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, The Feminist Press Gilman, Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Heath Anthology of American Literature, third edition , ed Paul Lauter New York: Houghton Mifflin Company 1998Gilman, Charlotte Perkins “Why did I write 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?” April 27, 2000 http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/wallpaper/whywrote.html