Personally, I will pick the first prompt to write about for this assignment. My reason for this is that I enjoyed reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Gilman demonstrated how these doctors neglected any recurring themes about mental instability in a wondrous and coherent narration, which emphasizes Freud’s initial claims about the abandonment of these said physicians. According to Freud’s Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, it said that “…training in anatomy, in physiology and pathology – leaves him in the lurch when he is confronted by the details of the hysterical phenomena. He cannot understand hysteria, and in the face of it he is himself a layman” (2201). This is evident that doctors at this time were considered as a “layman”, which is an individual that doesn’t have the correct amount of study and knowledge to undergo an efficient treatment. I believe that the reason why Freud is reinstating this fact to his audience is to create more influential credibility for the studies he conducted and discovered. Most doctors and physicians think of the hysterical conditions as malingering, and because of this, they become very disinterested in the mental state. Dr. Breuer and Sigmund Freud were the first ones to unravel studies on hysteria and were able to sympathize with these people who are suffering from psychic traumas. 

Besides, Gilman’s implications and characterization of John creates a sense that generalizes how doctors at this time were obsessed with realism, and will constantly refrain from any natural occurrences that do not agree with their own studies. Throughout the story, we see how John would constantly endorse the “resting cure” to his wife since he constantly opposes her to do house chores and to write in her journal. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it states that “…’I beg of you, for my sake and our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician?’…” (Gilman, 6). This signifies John’s conservative mindset over his wife’s mental state, which creates abrupt tension between the two characters. Since the main character slowly developed some form of fear of her husband, this denied all the leverage to express her feelings out and caused hysterical attributes. Moreover, one thing for certain is that Freud’s criticism towards the doctors of this time is evident in Gilman’s portrayal of John in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. These individuals are greatly emphasizing, using literary work, the tragedy that hysterical patients needed to face in this time.            

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