Mistreated Illness

I am so glad times have changed and now we are able to correctly evaluate and help those with mental anxiety. It is so sad to read this story of the narrator's dealings with mental illness. After being prescribed the "rest cure", in which the patient is not allowed to do anything at all, she knows it is not making her well again and expresses this from page one, claiming, "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good." (368).

We can also see that the narrator realizes writing is one thing she is able to do in secret and also a way to relax her mind when she says, "I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind." (368). She later claims that writing is tiring, but after rereading this section, I saw that it is not the act of writing which is tiresome, but the constant need to hide what she is doing. She obviously knows that the rest cure is not helping her condition, but she trusts her husband, John, to do the right thing for her.

I was also thinking as I was reading that maybe it is not a nervous disorder that she is suffering, but perhaps it could be Postpartum Depression. It mentioned how she had a child and was not even allowed to see the baby, which made her sad. I'm not sure if they knew what this was then, but do you think this has potential as her actual problem?