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Primary source: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall Paper, novella, 1899.
Caption: Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a well-educated American woman who became depressed after her marriage in 1884. Diagnosed with neurasthenia and prescribed the "rest-cure,"she later wrote about her experience in The Yellow Wall Paper, published in 1899.
[ . . . ]
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
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 to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
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?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
[ . . . ]
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall Paper, (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1899).
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