Why do you think people in this period discouraged women from writing?

In Gilman's own words, she was discouraged from writing because the doctors attributed her depression and nervous disorder. In essence, she was told that using her intelligence.... thinking and writing, were the cause of her problems. Women weren't supposed to think or worry about the intricacies of daily life.... that was a man's job. Women's opinions were brushed off, as their opinions were expected to reflect those of their husband. As a result, these instructions kept women in their place, as subordinates to their husbands, and suppressed their individual identities.

"For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia—and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded that there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as possible,' to 'have but two hours' intelligent life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.' This was in 1887…"

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall-paper," 1913