The Issues of Past Mass Hysteria in the 19th Century

Social mores within the 19th Century were mostly based around gender and in literary works such as “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, they are explained through woman hysteria and feminist or often, sexist, point of views. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is a short story written from the perspective of a feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a feminist. The main character in the story is a woman who moves into a very large house with her husband for the summer. She has been diagnosed with “hysteria” by a male doctor and her husband. Having no power over, what in this time period was considered logical, she had submitted to her husband’s idea of recovery. The story is based off of the experiences of the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman was diagnosed with this so-called “hysteria” and her husband at the time, Charles Stetson, told her she needed a lot of rest. Gilman knew that rest was not going make her situation better. However, her husband’s idea of recovery was to gain more self-control and stay away from social interaction. This was known as the rest cure. This “cure” led Gilman to a deep depression. The author reflects her experience in the text to inform and educate her readers about the lack of professional diagnoses when it comes to women. Gilman hoped it would open the eyes of physicians and women so proper diagnoses and treatment could be provided.

Hysteria was actually thought to be caused by the uterus. Doctors thought that a uterus would retain fluid and cause pain or irritability for a woman. Some symptoms caused by hysteria were insomnia, anxiety, and loss of appetite or sexual desire. These symptoms are common with so many other illnesses. Some could even be caused by the common cold. Instead, they were labeled against women and they were not taken seriously by any means.

The connection of women and hysteria were common within the 19th century and even the year the story had been published, 1891. Within the 19th century, many factors contributed to women’s declining mental and physical health. Some for example, were cultural changes, fighting for equality, and society’s view on women. The results of these changes were “accompanied by a virtual epidemic of ‘nervous weakness’ largely among women, causing feminist historians to begin asking whether the diagnostic category of hysteria was simply a way of keeping women in the home” (Briggs 246). In “The Yellow Wall-paper”, the main character questions the trust she has in her husband and physician when she says “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?” (Gilman 844). Because women did not know any better in this time period, anything stated by a man they trust, was acceptable reasoning. But had things been different at that time, if women could have had better jobs, higher education, and a say in social matters, they would not have had to rely on the words of a man to understand themselves.

This was a serious issue to Gilman, she wanted to raise awareness and fight for significance within the medical world. She wanted her feelings to be justified, not diagnosed. Using her work, Gilman strived for people to become aware of this serious and common misconception. It would seem like progress was made from women putting these experiences out in the open, though “in spite of its pervasiveness in nineteenth-century fiction, nervous fever is seldom taken seriously in the growing body of critical work on medicine in nineteenth-century literature. Much of the critical attention it has received has treated it as a slippery metaphor for female sexual repression, and a melodramatic gesture that is contrary to realism.” (Wilson 276). The realization of hysteria and its affect on the female mind, did not come until the late 1950’s when it was actually classified as a mental disorder.