es Dr. Mitchell as a member of the medical community with erroneous beliefs regarding female hysteria in "The Yellow Wallpaper." The narrator complains of her husband's threat of treatment in her journal: John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don't want to got there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! (260). This negative comparison between John and Dr. Mitchell alerts the reader that the suppression that the narrator is exposed to at the hands of her husband parallels the oppression of Gilman by Dr. Mitchell.References to Dr. Mitchell's rest cure are also found within the text of "The Yellow Wallpaper". Mitchell defines his rest cure in his essay "Fat and Blood": …the rest I like for [my patients] is not at all their notion of rest. To lie abed half the day, and sew a little and read a little, and be interesting as invalids and excite sympathy is all very well, but when they are bidden to stay in bed a month, and neither to read, write, nor sew…then repose becomes for some women a rather bitter medicine. (105-106)This patronizing view of treating women as school children who faked illness to stay home from school and then had to stay in bed all day is echoed in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in the way in which John, as the narrator's husband and practicing physician, treats his wife. The narrator describes the rest cure as prescribed by her husband: "…[I] am absolutely forbidden to 'work' until I am well again" (255). The emphasis on work as the potential cause of hysteria mirrors Mitchell's belief that the American woman was physically unfit for her duties in "Wear and Tear". Although the narrator questions the validity of the rest cure she submits to the treatment. Her reasoning is "If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures [everyone] that there is really nothing the matter ...
