In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" Jane is naturally the victim and sympathetic character in this story created by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman is a feminist from the nineteenth century and wrote this story about the rest cure "as a critique of the medical treatment prescribed to women suffering from a condition then known as 'neurasthenia'" (Witalec 1). Jane is the most dynamic character in the worst way, and readers see issues of doubt, negligence and depression that are expressed through Jane's writings throughout the story. Readers can experience this because of Gilman's "own experiences with a 'rest cure'" (Witalec 1), bleeding into the story.
From the beginning of the story the author lets readers see that Jane and John both have doubts about each other, each in different ways. The doubt that Jane has mostly refers to the house and the decision of "the physician" to go there when she says "I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it" (Gilman 473). Where John's doubts, on the other hand, are focused more on her imagination and opinion, because he as a physician of high standing "knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (Gilman 474). John's doubts are important to understand because if he were to just listen to her and attempt to make her more comfortable in that house, perhaps she never would have had to see the "bars" on the wall shaking. Instead Jane is forced to suffer in silence as John laughs at her "of course, but one expects that" (Gilman 473). Everyone else either doubts her mind, writings, or opinions on how to get better. For example, Jane's brother, "is also a physician, and also of high standing" (Gilman 473), and he agrees and says the same thing as John on using the rest cure. (The rest cure is essentially doing as little as possible physically and mentally, and being isolated in a good environment, with intention to improve one's mental or physical health.
