Mitchell pioneered the rest cure, a treatment that entailed the patient being bed-ridden in an effort to stop the exertion of energy. Many women, including author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were ordered to lay in bed and could not rise to feed, bathe or even use the bathroom themselves. This form of treatment for female "neuralgia" or other forms of mental illness imprisoned women inside their homes with their husbands and doctor as their captors instead of the previously used asylums.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's most famous work brings the reader into the mind of a woman on the rest cure. With the male figures in her life as her captors, the narrator is forced into a room with nothing to do but think. What's surprising about Gilman's story is the fact that it was so widely celebrated when it was a clear form of resistence against the forms of control over the female body in the late 19th century. Was it simply cognitive dissonance where her audience could believe the story to be entirely fiction, or did her writing stand in to support women who could not share their voices?
