“Lie down an hour after each meal,” a famous Philadelphia neurologist advised writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was suffering from marital malaise and a deep-seated desire not to clean the house. “Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.”
Unfortunately, that curious counsel was no anomaly in 1885; doctors routinely dispensed an admonition against activity to women afflicted with “nervous prostration,” a condition thought to stem from overstimulation of the fragile female nervous system. Rest and relaxation in the bosom of the family constituted the state-of-the-art cure. But Gilman, whose nerves were already “wilted,” and whose mind resembled a “piece of boiled spinach,” thought the physician’s suggestion sounded more like a recipe for month-old stew.
“Life is a a verb!” she would later write. “Life consists of action.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories, 1892
Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories, 1892
