This edition of the Student Paper is focused on health, a multifaceted topic which relates to most aspects of our daily lives. Since the dawn of mankind, we’ve speculated about health, and our ideas have induced anxiety and fear but also resulted in knowledge. The importance of health to mankind causes our ideas regarding it to become somewhat relative: they are influenced by the current zeitgeist. I want to turn the idea of “health on its head and look into an example from the late 19th century, to demonstrate how “health” and “illness” are indeed fluctuating phenomena.

“Temporary nervous depression”

In 1892, the American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman published a short story titled The Yellow Wallpaper. Its protagonist and central figure is a young woman of no name, who has just had her first child, but is distressed and finds herself unable to connect with her newborn. The story’s main plot symbolically describes the woman’s painful experience of postpartum depression and the treatment she endures as a result. The woman’s husband, who is a physician, rents an old mansion for the summer to ensure his wife gets some rest. Modern physicians would diagnose the woman’s symptoms as clear signs of postpartum depression, but her husband describes them as a “temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency.” He instructs her to drink health tonics and embark on journeys to ensure she gets enough fresh air and exercise. The second condition of the treatment proves most difficult for the woman: she is absolutely forbidden to work, write, and partake in stimulating conversation until she becomes better.

The woman spends most of her time in an abandoned children’s room on the mansion’s upper floor, where her condition steadily deteriorates. The room’s walls are covered with frayed, yellow wallpaper which upsets her greatly and slowly consumes all of her attention. In time, she becomes convinced that a hunched shadowy figure hides behind the wallpaper, a woman who crawls and sneaks along the walls at night and longs to escape. Finally, the protagonist decides to free the woman from under the wallpaper by tearing it to shreds. She succeeds, which concludes the story, albeit the ending takes somewhat of a dark turn. The last sentences describe the two women merging into one woman who crawls round and round the room, hunched and demented.

In the eyes of the modern reader, the marriage and the young woman’s position within it clearly affect her mental condition, not “temporary nervous depression”. To understand the story on a deeper level it’s essential to note the environment in which it is written, because Gilman herself had experienced postpartum depression and used fiction to express it. Her true story is hard to believe, but knowing the author’s background allows the reader to note the sarcasm and contempt embedded in every sentence of The Yellow Wallpaper.

*The sick girl (La malade), painting by Félix Vallotton made in 1892,* The Yellow Wallpaper’s *publishing year*

Silas Weir Mitchell’s rest cure

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in the year 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. At age 24, she got married and had her only child, a daughter named Katherine, a year later. Motherhood seems to have proven to be a challenge for Gilman, as her memoir records how she felt no happiness when holding her daughter, only pain. After struggling with these emotions for two years, she sought help from the doctor Silas Weir Mitchell who specialised in neurology. He claimed her troubles were caused by a condition he called neurasthenia, and as a solution prescribed the rest cure, a treatment which Mitchell himself pioneered.

The “rest cure” included 24 hours of bedrest for Gilman, in complete isolation from her family and friends, and a restrictive diet consisting mostly of high-fat dairy products. Over a hundred years later, the modern reader shudders at the thought of the “rest cure”’s conditions, as Gilman was not allowed to leave her bed, and was forbidden from reading, writing, talking or feeding herself. She had to endure these conditions for a whole month, and was subsequently sent home with the following instructions:

“Live as domestic a life as you possibly can. Keep your child with you at all times … nap for an hour after every meal. […] And never touch a pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.”

After having followed Weir Mitchell’s suggestions for some time, Gilman was devastated. As she described herself, she came so near the borderline of “utter mental ruin” that she could “see over.” Much like the protagonist in her short story, she used to crawl into cupboards, storage rooms and under beds to hide from the pressure caused by the treatment. When distanced from her husband, however, she noticed how she felt as if she were cured, and a short while afterwards she divorced him after three years of marriage. Gilman states that returning to work was what saved her. Seven years after Katherine’s birth, a portion of her work was published when The Yellow Wallpaper appeared in The New England Magazine. She went so far as to mention her former doctor, Weir Mitchell, by name, and even sent him a copy of the story. He never acknowledged it. Gilman later became a diligent writer and lecturer, a feminist advocate and the author of novels, poetry and numerous articles.

The deranged woman in the attic

The Yellow Wallpaper, a story which is now over 130 years old, is considered by many to be an important piece of feminist American literature, as it links the ruling societal norms of the 19th century to the mental and physical health of women. The young woman in the story is anonymous, and the names of other characters, John, the husband, Jennie, his sister, and the maid Mary, are commonplace and standard, which indicates that they serve as the representatives of the Wives, the Husbands and In-laws in general. The end of the story has also been interpreted in numerous ways, both as a victory and as a sort of defeat. Some claim the protagonist ultimately goes insane, while others feel as if she takes matters into her own hands. In a contradictory way she is “much happier”” in her insanity than the people around her, at least in the eyes of the modern reader.

The Yellow Wallpaper demonstrates Gilman’s remarkable courage as she openly describes the emotions of a woman who finds it difficult to connect with her child, a rare topic as it was considered shameful at the time, and arguably still is. “The deranged woman in the attic” has become a cultural cliche through the years, although her presence is usually relegated to the background of the story. We barely glimpse the horrible reality of the insane Ophelia, Lady Macbeth’s hallucinations and Bertha Rochester’s life while she is locked in the attic in Jane Eyre. What sets The Yellow Wallpaper apart from the rest, however, is how Gilman hands the “deranged woman” a pen and paper - an opportunity to express herself in her own voice.

Health is relative: The rest cure and hunched women behind wallpapers