1 Assistant Professor and Head, Department of Language, Culture and Society, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Faculty of Science and Humanities, Ramapuram
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Language, Culture and Society, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Faculty of Science and Humanities, Ramapuram
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) offers an enduring critique of medical authority, mental health treatment, and gendered power structures in the nineteenth century. Through the lens of Medical Humanities a field integrating literature, ethics, psychology, history, and sociology. This paper analyzes the narrator's mental deterioration as a result of the misguided "rest cure" and patriarchal medical practices. The story foregrounds issues of patient autonomy, narrative medicine, medical paternalism, and the sociocultural framing of illness. Drawing on literary scholarship (Golden, 2004; Treichler, 1984), medical history (Mitchell, 1888; Showalter, 1985), and narrative medicine theory (Charon, 2006), the analysis demonstrates how Gilman's text remains a vital resource for modern healthcare education.
Keywords: Medical Humanities, Narrative Medicine, Rest Cure, Gender, Mental Health, The Yellow Wallpaper
How to cite this article: Jabeela Shirlin J, Vilasini KA. Madness, Medicine, And Gender: A Medical Humanities Reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. Int J Drug Deliv Technol. 2026;16(5): 398-399. DOI: 10.25258/ijddt.16.5.41
Source of support: Nil.
Conflict of interest: None