Putting the rest cure to rest: An interpretive essay on "The Yellow Wallpaper"
- Introduction
- The Yellow Wallpaper: Based on Gilman's personal experience
- The real Weir Mitchell Rest Cure
- Gilman's representation of the rest cure
- Conclusion
Since its publication in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a variety of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost story, it has been regarded as Gothic 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 topic of the ‘rest cure’ and whether Gilman’s 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.”
[...] Several feministic essays written after The Yellow Wallpaper, state, as long as “women are associated with a sublime devotion to home and mothering, they are condemned to a morbid, defective, irregular [and] diseased existence.” Due to Gilman’s ongoing criticism about the subservient role women played in a male dominant society, and implications that humanity discouraged women from becoming educated and expressing themselves creatively, public interpretation of the story changed, especially views about the rest cure. After the 1973 reissue, its theme became seen as a “symptom of the male Victorian medical establishment’s desire to reorient [female neurasthenics2 ] to a domestic life.” Mitchell’s Rest Cure began to exemplify this standard. [...]
[...] If she wasn’t taking journeys through the garden, getting air or exercise, she was apt to be connecting the sprawling outlines or chasing undulating waves of optic horror in the wallpaper, tearing it off the wall or possibly ‘creeping.’ She was even allowed to entertain little company” on the Fourth of July, something completely contrary to the rest cures isolation therapy. Instead of full- feedings of milk products, she took phosphates, tonics, cod liver oil, say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.” A major contradiction between the genuine rest cure and the one Gilman depicted is the character had the time, energy and mental capability to manipulate her nurse out of the room throughout most of her recuperation. [...]
The Search
«Introduction. Count Dracula and his three female vampires. The book Salem's Lot. The search for knowledge in Dracula and Salem's Lot. Anne Rice's book Interview With the Vampire. Conclusion.»
«Through the evolution of the vampire novel, the search for knowledge and information remains a unifying theme that characterizes the genre. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stephen King's Salem's Lot, and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, this quest for understanding about vampires and their origin...»
Compare and contrast the ways in which both authors might be seen to present an indictment of...
«Introduction. American society. The Catcher in the Rye. The Virgin Suicides’. Both authors reference. Restrictive impact of the media. Conclusion.»
«There is an argument that American society was founded or widely based on the American Dream, an idea based on freedom, and the belief that prosperity will occur through hard work, with equal opportunity for all. This was the basis for the American Declaration of Independence, which stated 'All men...»
'The vulnerable human in his extremity meets the indifferent but infinitely varied forces of...
«Introduction. Hardy presents Tess as a manipulated young woman. Power of setting. Tess of the D’Urbervilles’. Wordsworth. Charles and Sarah. Conclusion.»
«The various setting, natural environments and resultant social pressures that are presented by our three writers, are shown to have serious consequences and effects on the physically vulnerable or emotionally sensitive characters presented by Hardy, Fowles and Wordsworth. Hardy presents Tess as...»