narrative

The narrator is a young wife and mother who has recently began to suffer symptoms of depression and anxiety.  This is understandable and expected after a miscarriage of her baby. Her  depression does not mean she is insane. We can surmise that many of her anxieties stem from living in a very patriarchal society. Although she does not believe that anything is wrong with her, John, her physician husband, diagnoses her with neurasthenia and prescribes several months of S. Weir Mitchell’s famed “rest cure.” In addition to being confined to the nursery in their rented summer home, the narrator is expressly forbidden to write or engage in any creative activity. It is only after her husband locks her up for her "rest cure" that she begins her descent into mental instability. Locking most anybody in a room for extended periods of time and taking away any means of expression would make the best of us go insane.