The Yellow Wallpaper Context: Madness in the late 19th Century

Here's a website that expands more on the nature of asylums in the late 19th Century, and the various mental illnesses that were commonly attributed to women. Note the underlying male paranoia in each diagnosis and how male discourse is aided and abetted by medical opinion.

Some highlights:

“Women during this time were deemed to be highly susceptible to becoming mentally ill as they did not have the mental capacity of men, and this risk grew greatly if the woman attempted to better herself through education or too many activities.“
(Subtext: By diagnosing the female physiology as not only different but inferior to men, society had a justification for trying to limit women’s roles out of the rationale that they could not handle it, and it was for their own good.)

“If a woman of the Victorian era were subject to an outburst (due to discontentment or repression), she would be deemed mad.”
(An effective means of silencing women.)

“These [spinsters and lesbians] were also controlled by the term "frigid" which was used to describe them. Women did not want to be "frigid" and thus married to avoid becoming labeled this manner (Ussher 81).”
(What are the connotations of ‘frigid’? By controlling labels, how does medical-establishment-endorsed patriarchy control women?)

More shocking revelations this way:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/madness.shtml