The husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” called his wife, the narrator “a blessed little goose” and a “little girl.”  These “terms of endearment” showed how the narrator was treated like a child by her husband.  Sent to an asylum to recuperate, the narrator was suffering from what many think was postpartum depression since she just had a child.  Any mental illness would have been taboo to talk about at that time, and the husband is just placating her strange condition.  As the narrator slipped more and more into depression and started imagining strange images in the wallpaper, the husband just wanted to calm her and began to call her childish names.  This behavior by the husband was indicative of how women were often thought to be at the time the story was written, the Victorian era.  Women were not taken seriously and often thought of as weak and sickly.  Women would have “the vapors” or fainting spells (probably due to the tight corsets they wore) and were often thought of as the frailer sex.  The husband affirmed a sexist behavior by calling his wife names as if she were a child that could be soothed and made better.