Although a reader cannot assume that the narrator is also the author, in some cases the resemblance is striking. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” drew on her own experience undergoing Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell's infamous rest cure to write her story. According to Gilman, "[The story] wasn't meant to drive people crazy, but to save them from impatience, and it worked" (The Forerunner). Through her writing platform Gilman successfully illustrated the inferiority suffered by women. The Rest Cure led people to believe that women should “live as domestic a life as possible” and that they were allowed “only two hours of intellectual life a day” (The Forerunner). These restrictions propagated the idea that women should be seen and not heard. Furthermore, the only place women could be seen was in the home. Dr. Mitchell's work shows how controlled many women's lives were at that time. Women constantly succumbed to the will of their spouses. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses symbolism, particularly the bedroom and wallpaper, to exemplify the inferiority that women face in society and how it inevitably pushes some women to try to find their own freedom. The theme of inferiority recurs throughout Gilman's work. Throughout the story it seems that men have the upper hand and power in the relationship between husband and wife. The narrator's husband, being a doctor, prescribes drugs to cure her hysteria. Even if he doesn't agree with his methods, he follows them. An example would be when the narrator states, "Personally, I don't agree with their ideas... But what is to be done?" (Gilmann 625). This conformity to the husband's will......middle of paper......dominance? Works CitedMitchell, S. Weir. Fat and blood: an essay on the treatment of some forms of neurasthenia and hysteria. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1882. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fat and Blood, by S. Weir Mitchell. Project Gutenberg, July 7, 2005. Web. February 23, 2011. .Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. ""The Yellow Wallpaper"" Portable Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction. Ed. Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and Lynne Crockett. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 624-38. Print.Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. ""Why did I write the yellow wallpaper"" The Forerunner, October 1913. College of Staten Island Library. The College of Staten Island of the City University of New York., June 9, 1999. Web. February 21. 2011. .