Trifles 487experience with illness and the “rest cure.” At the
beginning of The Yellow Wallpaper, we learn that the
narrator, like Gilman, has been diagnosed as suffer-
ing from a “temporary nervous depression—a slight
hysterical tendency,” following the birth of her child.
The narrator’s husband, John is a physician. The
treatment they have prescribed for the narrator is
the “rest cure.”
At the end of the 19th century, the “rest cure”
was a common treatment for upper-class women
deemed to be suffering from “women’s diseases” such
as “hysteria.” The “rest cure” required that patients
have no physical or intellectual stimulation. Part of
what this means for the narrator is that she has been
forbidden to write. The narrator does not agree with
this prescription, and The Yellow Wallpaper itself
becomes evidence of her resistance to her treatment,
since it is made up of the journal entries she has
been secretly recording. The narrator is threatened
that if she doesn’t get well and follow her husband’s
instructions, she will be sent to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell,
whom the narrator describes as, “like John and my
brother, only more so.” Mitchell was the physician
who treated Gilman for “hysteria” and who was
famous for his “rest cure” for “hysterics.”
In the late 19th century, “women’s diseases” such
as “hysteria” were often associated with actions or
emotional responses that were seen as inappropri-
ate for women. In the narrator’s case, she is diag-
nosed with “hysteria” because she has not “properly”
bonded with her baby—“It is fortunate Mary is
good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I
cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous”—and
because of her heightened imagination, “He says
that with my imaginative power and habit of story-
making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead
to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to
use my will and good sense to check the tendency.”
It is important to note that in the late 19th century
neither of these traits would be seen as an illness in
men.
The narrator’s imaginative tendency is contrasted
to John’s scientific approach to life: “John is practical
in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an
intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly
at any talk of things not being felt and seen and put
down in figures.” Even in judging if his wife’s con-
dition is improving, John uses quantifiable criteria:
“You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is
better, I feel really much easier about you.” When
the narrator suggests that her “problem” may be
other than physical, she is quickly silenced, “Better in
body perhaps—.” In the world the narrator lives in,
reason equals health and imagination equals illness.
But ironically, it is only when the narrator indulges
her imagination in contemplating the mystery of the
wallpaper that she begins to feel better. “John is so
pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the
other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite
of my wall-paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had
no intention of telling him it was because of the wall-
paper—he would make fun of me.”
Illness can be read in two ways in The Yellow
Wallpaper, one literal and one metaphorical. On
one level, the story can be read as a protest against
the treatment that Gilman herself received under
Dr. Weir Mitchell’s care. Gilman believed that her
condition worsened while undergoing the “rest cure”
and that she improved only when she took control
of her own treatment and indulged her creative
impulses. Gilman’s experience with the “rest cure” is
reflected in the experience of the narrator of The Yel-
low Wallpaper. In fact, Weir Mitchell acknowledged
the role the The Yellow Wallpaper played in his aban-
doning the “rest cure” as a treatment. Metaphorically,
illness can be read as a device used by patriarchal
culture to control the behavior of women. When
the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper behaves in ways
that are seen as inappropriate for a woman to act, she
is deemed ill and is locked in a room until the inap-
propriate behavior can be controlled. In this way, the
story employs illness as a metaphor for the control
patriarchal culture has over the lives of women.
Carmine EspositogLaSPELL, SuSan Trifles (1916)
In Trifles, Susan Glaspell depicts the murder case of
John Wright. Based on a trial that Glaspell covered
as a journalist, the play takes place in the Wright
home on the morning after John’s wife, Minnie, was
arrested for strangling her husband. Men enter the
house on official business: The county attorney, the
sheriff, and Mr. Hale are there to secure evidence