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The Yellow Wallpaper ': In The Rest Cure'

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In the late Victorian era when The Yellow Wallpaper was written, men essentially had complete power over their domestic space, even though women were in charge of running it. The Yellow Wallpaper clearly exemplifies the domesticity from the Victorian era and the roles women were placed in. However, the story shows a more extreme side through a treatment the narrator is placed under called “The Rest Cure”, which was a typical mental disorder-related treatment in the Victorian Era. In the short story, this is shown through the treatment of the narrator like a prisoner by her husband, John, in what is supposed to be her own domestic sphere, her being not allowed to perform even the domestic duties expected from women in that time period, making …show more content…
This was fairly parallel to the beliefs at the time, despite the feminist movement, that woman belonged in their domestic space rather than doing anything that involved anything else. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator secretly writes a journal. She is not allowed to do this, but she does anyways to help showcase her downward spiral into madness, an excellent way for the author to let the reader follow the narrator’s journey into madness. As Wang notes, this rule of no reading or writing allowed women to be brainwashed, and to be “cured” of whatever mental disorder they suffered from: “John decreed that his wife should not do anything, especially writing, and he hypocritically added that it was for her own good,” (Wang 13). Their voices were silenced in order for them to bow down to the “patriarchal authority” they were under (Wang 14). In the Victorian Era, women were already to have no sense of real intellect or creativity, other than reading and writing. However, under The Rest Cure, the narrator was not even allowed this. Even she believes that this writing, if she were actually allowed to perform it, would help her: “I think that sometimes if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try,” (649). She does not know if the secret writing she is doing is helping her or actually making her even worse, which is what her husband and the rest of society want her to believe, so she can go back to being “normal” and a good house-wife (Esposito

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