Last (Belated) Thought on the Yellow Wallpaper

After thinking about what Kyla had said in her blog post about "The Yellow Wallpaper", I thought I'd give one last thought on the matter. I reject the reading of "The Yellow Wallpaper" as being a feminist text, particularly after hearing Ryan say that the rest cure was also prescribed for men. To my mind, Gilman's story is not about the mistreatment of a woman by the patriarchy (and unfortunately, I used that as part of my final paper--please don't fail me, Dr. Hanrahan), but rather the ignorance of the medical world at the time as well as the indifference of "professionals" to the patient's own input. Horrifying medical practices, far worse than the rest cure, have appeared throughout medical history, even (relatively) recently. The practice of lobotomizing patients, effectively killing who they were, began in 1935 (37 years after The Yellow Wallpaper was written, so there was not a massive improvement in the medical profession as a whole in that time), and electroshock therapy began three years after that.

It is worth noting, however, that women were the recipients of these practices more often than men. So, were there discriminatory practices, intentional or unintentional, against women in the medical world in those days? Most likely. Would John have treated his patient with more respect and listened to her complaints more carefully if she had been a man? Maybe. But that doesn't mean that "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written to decry the mistreatment of women. The lessons in the story can be applied to male patients just as easily as female. It seems not to argue against the patriarchy so much as against harmful medical treatment. And believe me, the medical world is still evolving, and mistreatment or misdiagnoses of patients, male and female, still occur today.