His wife is his child, and she does not know even the simplest things about what ails her. But the woman's own views of what she would like-to see friends, to write, to read-are completely discounted, and her husband's treatment, like his language throughout the tale, is truly patriarchal. 'The Yellow Wallpaper' shows how well cared for the unnamed protagonist is by her authoritarian husband John, who is conveniently a physician, and her physician-brother, as well as by her stereotypical, loving sister-in-law, who enjoys caring for the new baby as well as for the sick protagonist. Along with the pervasive medical attitude that women's problems all stemmed from hysteria and were based on the womb, it was this stricture that bothered Gilman the most. But Mitchell's treatment-a rest cure that depended on seclusion, massage, immobility, and overfeeding, with some women gaining 50 pounds during the six weeks of hospitalization-had at its root complete mental inactivity. Weir Mitchell, whose 'cures' for women were world famous. Like Winifred Howells, Edith Wharton, and Jane Addams, Gilman was sent to Dr. Gilman, an influential economist, lecturer, and publisher, experienced depression from the time of her first marriage to Charles Walter Stetson, and the depression intensified after their daughter was born. It was revived by Feminist Press after being out of print for 70 years and is now one of the most often read and written-about stories of feminist consciousness. Narratives of supernatural horror were a staple of magazines at the turn of the century, and Gilman's story-published in 1892 in The New England Magazine, in 1899 as a chapbook, and later by William Dean Howells in a 1920 story collection-was read without attention to the gender of the unnamed protagonist. It was originally seen as a Poe-like gothic tale, but it is now considered a classic story of a woman suffering postpartum depression and improperly treated with isolation and inactivity. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was rejected by the editor of Atlantic Monthly because the story made him miserable.

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