Dissertation writing - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there really is 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 phosphates – 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?

I did write for a while in spite of them, but it does exhaust me a good deal – having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.’

An extract from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. I'm currently in the middle of researching and writing my dissertation and came across in Joan Busfield's text Men, Women and Madness'. A classic example of a patriarchal society!