How did male doctors treat women? What was the overall attitude towards women and mental illness?
             The overall attitude that most men had against woman with mental illnesses is that it was mostly "caused by malfunctions of the reproductive organs" (Women and Doctors). The men of this time really didn't treat it as serious as it should have been. They mostly told the women to get a lot of rest and they "warned adolescent girls that they could damage themselves by pursuing intellectual interests" (Women and Doctors). The men believed that learning and doing things that involved thinking hurt the illness, which now in modern day is known as menopause. As in the "Yellow Wallpaper", John, the husband of the lady with the illness, doesn't really pay much attention to her needs, which can also be portrayed as how the men treated the women with certain illnesses. In the story she wanted to change the wallpaper of the room, but he says, "I don't care to renovate the house just for three months' rental" (Gilman). Later on in the story she wants to get out of the room and visit her cousin and uncle, but yet again he says that it wouldn't be good for her and declines the request.
             What in Gilman's life was reflected in the story and thereby added depth and influence on its readers?
             "The Yellow Wallpaper" had much equality to Gilman's life and was reflected on many of her readers which made a great influence on them. As a child her dad "frequently left the family for long periods during her childhood" (Women's History). This reflected through "The Yellow Wallpaper" because in the story the sickly woman's husband, John, "is kept in town very often by serious cases" (Gilman). In 1885 Gilman had a nervous breakdown and was advised by a neurologist "who prescribed his "rest cure&
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