the yellow wallpaper resume

The Yellow Wallpaper

By charlotte perkins gilman.

• The Yellow Wallpaper Summary

The narrator and her physician husband, John , have rented a mansion for the summer so that she can recuperate from a “slight hysterical tendency.” Although the narrator does not believe that she is actually ill, John is convinced that she is suffering from “neurasthenia” and prescribes the “rest cure” treatment. She is confined to bed rest in a former nursery room and is forbidden from working or writing. The spacious, sunlit room has yellow wallpaper – stripped off in two places – with a hideous, chaotic pattern. The narrator detests the wallpaper, but John refuses to change rooms, arguing that the nursery is best-suited for her recovery.

Two weeks later, the narrator’s condition has worsened. She feels a constant sense of anxiety and fatigue and can barely muster enough energy to write in her secret journal. Fortunately, their nanny, Mary , takes care of their baby, and John's sister, Jennie , is a perfect housekeeper. The narrator's irritation with the wallpaper grows; she discovers a recurring pattern of bulbous eyes and broken necks, as well as the faint image of a skulking figure stuck behind the pattern.

As more days pass, the narrator grows increasingly anxious and depressed. The wallpaper provides her only stimulation, and she spends the majority of her time studying its confusing patterns which, as she asserts, are almost as “good as gymnastics.” The image of the figure stooping down and "creeping" around behind the wallpaper becomes clearer each day. By moonlight, she can see very distinctly that the figure is a woman trapped behind bars. The narrator attempts to convince John to leave the house for a visit with relatives, but he refuses, and the narrator does not feel comfortable confiding in him about her discoveries in the wallpaper. Moreover, she is becoming paranoid that John and Jennie are also interested in the wallpaper and is determined that only she will uncover its secrets.

The narrator's health improves as her interest in the wallpaper deepens. She suspects that Jennie and John are observing her behavior, but her only concern is that they become obstacles to her and the wallpaper. She also begins to notice that the distinct "yellow smell" of the wallpaper has spread over the house, following her even when she goes for rides. At night, the woman in the wallpaper shakes the bars in the pattern violently as she tries to break through them, but she cannot break free. The swirling pattern has strangled the heads of the many women who have tried to break through the wallpaper. The narrator begins to hallucinate, believing that she has seen the woman creeping surreptitiously outside in the sunlight. The narrator intends to peel off the wallpaper before she leaves the house in two days.

That night, the narrator helps the woman in the wallpaper by peeling off the wallpaper halfway around the room. The next day, Jennie is shocked, but the narrator convinces her that she only stripped the wallpaper out of spite. Jennie is able to understand the desire to peel off the ugly wallpaper and does not tell John that anything is out of the ordinary. The next night, the narrator locks herself in her room and continues stripping the wallpaper. She hears shrieks within the wallpaper as she tears it off. She contemplates jumping out of a window, but the bars prevent that; besides, she is afraid of all of the women that are creeping about outside of the house. When morning comes, the narrator has peeled off all of the wallpaper and begun to creep around the perimeter of the room. John eventually breaks into the room, but the narrator does not recognize him. She informs him that she has peeled off most of the wallpaper so that now no one can put her back inside the walls. John faints, and the narrator continues creeping around the room over him.

The Yellow Wallpaper Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Yellow Wallpaper is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why is the house standing empty after so many years?

We are never apprised of the reason that the house is empty.

8. Throughout the story, the narrator uses the word “creep” and “creeping” to describe the wallpaper figure’s movements. What does this word choice suggest about the narrator?

The words "creep" and "creeping" suggest that the narrator has sensed a disturbing feeling from the wallpaper figure’s movements. The narrator has begun to see the pattern as that of a woman wanting to be free. She related herself with this woman...

6. How does the story’s narrative form contribute to the development of the narrator’s point of view

The first person narrative is instrumental in conveying the events story's events as the narrator experiences them without the use of flashbacks or alternate settings. In turn, we as readers, experience the events alongside the narrator and become...

Study Guide for The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper study guide contains a biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Yellow Wallpaper
• Character List

Essays for The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper.

• Responding to the Wallpaper
• The Stages of Feminine Injustice
• "Personally, I Disagree With Their Ideas"
• Paper, Paper, On the Wall...
• Prescription to Madness

Lesson Plan for The Yellow Wallpaper

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Introduction to The Yellow Wallpaper
• Relationship to Other Books
• Notes to the Teacher

E-Text of The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper E-Text contains the full text of The Yellow Wallpaper

• Full Text of The Yellow Wallpaper

Wikipedia Entries for The Yellow Wallpaper

• Introduction
• Plot summary
• Interpretations
• Dramatic adaptations

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, understanding the yellow wallpaper: summary and analysis.

General Education

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" tells the story of a young woman’s gradual descent into psychosis. " The Yellow Wallpaper" is often cited as an early feminist work that predates a woman’s right to vote in the United States. The author was involved in first-wave feminism, and her other works questioned the origins of the subjugation of women, particularly in marriage. "

The Yellow Wallpaper" is a widely read work that asks difficult questions about the role of women, particularly regarding their mental health and right to autonomy and self-identity. We’ll go over The Yellow Wallpaper summary, themes and symbols, The Yellow Wallpaper analysis, and some important information about the author.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" Summary

"The Yellow Wallpaper" details the deterioration of a woman's mental health while she is on a "rest cure" on a rented summer country estate with her family. Her obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom marks her descent into psychosis from her depression throughout the story.

The narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" begins the story by discussing her move to a beautiful estate for the summer. Her husband, John, is also her doctor , and the move is meant in part to help the narrator overcome her “illness,” which she explains as nervous depression, or nervousness, following the birth of their baby. John’s sister, Jennie, also lives with them and works as their housekeeper.

Though her husband believes she will get better with rest and by not worrying about anything, the narrator has an active imagination and likes to write . He discourages her wonder about the house, and dismisses her interests. She mentions her baby more than once, though there is a nurse that cares for the baby, and the narrator herself is too nervous to provide care.

The narrator and her husband move into a large room that has ugly, yellow wallpaper that the narrator criticizes. She asks her husband if they can change rooms and move downstairs, and he rejects her. The more she stays in the room, the more the narrator’s fascination with the hideous wallpaper grows.

After hosting family for July 4th, the narrator expresses feeling even worse and more exhausted. She struggles to do daily activities, and her mental state is deteriorating. John encourages her to rest more, and the narrator hides her writing from him because he disapproves.

In the time between July 4th and their departure, the narrator is seemingly driven insane by the yellow wallpaper ; she sleeps all day and stays up all night to stare at it, believing that it comes alive, and the patterns change and move. Then, she begins to believe that there is a woman in the wallpaper who alters the patterns and is watching her.

A few weeks before their departure, John stays overnight in town and the narrator wants to sleep in the room by herself so she can stare at the wallpaper uninterrupted. She locks out Jennie and believes that she can see the woman in the wallpaper . John returns and frantically tries to be let in, and the narrator refuses; John is able to enter the room and finds the narrator crawling on the floor. She claims that the woman in the wallpaper has finally exited, and John faints, much to her surprise.

Background on "The Yellow Wallpaper"

The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was a lecturer for social reform, and her beliefs and philosophy play an important part in the creation of "The Yellow Wallpaper," as well as the themes and symbolism in the story. "The Yellow Wallpaper" also influenced later feminist writers.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, known as Charlotte Perkins Stetsman while she was married to her first husband, was born in Hartford, CT in 1860. Young Charlotte was observed as being bright, but her mother wasn’t interested in her education, and Charlotte spent lots of time in the library.

Charlotte married Charles Stetsman in 1884, and her daughter was born in 1885. She suffered from serious postpartum depression after giving birth to their daughter, Katharine. Her battle with postpartum depression and the doctors she dealt with during her illness inspired her to write "The Yellow Wallpaper."

The couple separated in 1888, the year that Perkins Gilman wrote her first book, Art Gems for the Home and Fireside. She later wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1890, while she was in a relationship with Adeline Knapp, and living apart from her legal husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published in 1892, and in 1893 she published a book of satirical poetry , In This Our World, which gained her fame.

Eventually, Perkins Gilman got officially divorced from Stetsman, and ended her relationship with Knapp. She married her cousin, Houghton Gilman, and claimed to be satisfied in the marriage .

Perkins Gilman made a living as a lecturer on women’s issues, labor issues, and social reform . She toured Europe and the U.S. as a lecturer, and founded her own magazine, The Forerunner.

Publication

"The Yellow Wallpaper" was first published in January 1892 in New England Magazine.

During Perkins Gilman's lifetime, the role of women in American society was heavily restricted both socially and legally. At the time of its publication, women were still twenty-six years away from gaining the right to vote .

This viewpoint on women as childish and weak meant that they were discouraged from having any control over their lives. Women were encouraged or forced to defer to their husband’s opinions in all aspects of life , including financially, socially, and medically. Writing itself was revolutionary, since it would create a sense of identity, and was thought to be too much for the naturally fragile women.

Women's health was a particularly misunderstood area of medicine, as women were viewed as nervous, hysterical beings, and were discouraged from doing anything to further “upset” them. The prevailing wisdom of the day was that rest would cure hysteria, when in reality the constant boredom and lack of purpose likely worsened depression .

Perkins Gilman used her own experience in her first marriage and postpartum depression as inspiration for The Yellow Wallpaper, and illustrates how a woman’s lack of autonomy is detrimental to her mental health.

Upon its publication, Perkins Gilman sent a copy of "The Yellow Wallpaper" to the doctor who prescribed her the rest cure for her postpartum depression.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" Characters

Though there are only a few characters in the story, they each have an important role. While the story is about the narrator’s mental deterioration, the relationships in her life are essential for understanding why and how she got to this point.

The Narrator

The narrator of the story is a young, upper-middle-class woman. She is imaginative and a natural writer, though she is discouraged from exploring this part of herself. She is a new mother and is thought to have “hysterical tendencies” or suffer from nervousness. Her name may be Jane but it is unclear.

John is the narrator’s husband and her physician. He restricts her activity as a part of her treatment. John is extremely practical, and belittles the narrator's imagination and feelings . He seems to care about her well-being, but believes he knows what is best for her and doesn't allow her input.

Jennie is John’s sister, who works as a housekeeper for the couple. Jennie seems concerned for the narrator, as indicated by her offer to sleep in the yellow wallpapered room with her. Jennie seems content with her domestic role .

Main Themes of "The Yellow Wallpaper"

From what we know about the author of this story and from interpreting the text, there are a few themes that are clear from a "Yellow Wallpaper" analysis. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was a serious piece of literature that addressed themes pertinent to women.

Women's Role in Marriage

Women were expected to be subordinate to their husbands and completely obedient, as well as take on strictly domestic roles inside the home . Upper middle class women, like the narrator, may go for long periods of time without even leaving the home. The story reveals that this arrangement had the effect of committing women to a state of naïveté, dependence, and ignorance.

John assumes he has the right to determine what’s best for his wife, and this authority is never questioned. He belittles her concerns, both concrete and the ones that arise as a result of her depression , and is said so brush her off and “laugh at her” when she speaks through, “this is to be expected in marriage” He doesn’t take her concerns seriously, and makes all the decisions about both of their lives.

As such, she has no say in anything in her life, including her own health, and finds herself unable to even protest.

Perkins Gilman, like many others, clearly disagreed with this state of things, and aimed to show the detrimental effects that came to women as a result of their lack of autonomy.

Identity and Self-Expression

Throughout the story, the narrator is discouraged from doing the things she wants to do and the things that come naturally to her, like writing. On more than one occasion, she hurries to put her journal away because John is approaching .

She also forces herself to act as though she’s happy and satisfied, to give the illusion that she is recovering, which is worse. She wants to be a good wife, according to the way the role is laid out for her, but struggles to conform especially with so little to actually do.

The narrator is forced into silence and submission through the rest cure, and desperately needs an intellectual and emotional outlet . However, she is not granted one and it is clear that this arrangement takes a toll.

The Rest Cure

The rest cure was commonly prescribed during this period of history for women who were “nervous.” Perkins Gilman has strong opinions about the merits of the rest cure , having been prescribed it herself. John’s insistence on the narrator getting “air” constantly, and his insistence that she do nothing that requires mental or physical stimulation is clearly detrimental.

The narrator is also discouraged from doing activities, whether they are domestic- like cleaning or caring for her baby- in addition to things like reading, writing, and exploring the grounds of the house. She is stifled and confined both physically and mentally, which only adds to her condition .

Perkins Gilman damns the rest cure in this story, by showing the detrimental effects on women, and posing that women need mental and physical stimulation to be healthy, and need to be free to make their own decisions over health and their lives.

The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis: Symbols and Symbolism

Symbols are a way for the author to give the story meaning, and provide clues as to the themes and characters. There are two major symbols in "The Yellow Wallpaper."

The Yellow Wallpaper

This is of course the most important symbol in the story. The narrator is immediately fascinated and disgusted by the yellow wallpaper, and her understanding and interpretation fluctuates and intensifies throughout the story.

The narrator, because she doesn’t have anything else to think about or other mental stimulation, turns to the yellow wallpaper as something to analyze and interpret. The pattern eventually comes into focus as bars, and then she sees a woman inside the pattern . This represents feeling trapped.

At the end of the story, the narrator believes that the woman has come out of the wallpaper. This indicates that the narrator has finally merged fully into her psychosis , and become one with the house and domesticated discontent.

Though Jennie doesn’t have a major role in the story, she does present a foil to the narrator. Jennie is John’s sister and their housekeeper, and she is content, or so the narrator believes, to live a domestic life. Though she does often express her appreciation for Jennie’s presence in her home, she is clearly made to feel guilty by Jennie’s ability to run the household unencumbered .

Irony in The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper" makes good use of dramatic and situational irony. Dramatic literary device in which the reader knows or understands things that the characters do not. Situational irony is when the character’s actions are meant to do one thing, but actually do another. Here are a few examples.

For example, when the narrator first enters the room with the yellow wallpaper, she believes it to be a nursery . However, the reader can clearly see that the room could have just as easily been used to contain a mentally unstable person.

The best example of situational irony is the way that John continues to prescribe the rest-cure, which worsens the narrator's state significantly. He encourages her to lie down after meals and sleep more, which causes her to be awake and alert at night, when she has time to sit and evaluate the wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper Summary

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is one of the defining works of feminist literature. Writing about a woman’s health, mental or physical, was considered a radical act at the time that Perkins Gilman wrote this short story. Writing at all about the lives of women was considered at best, frivolous, and at worst dangerous. When you take a look at The Yellow Wallpaper analysis, the story is an important look into the role of women in marriage and society, and it will likely be a mainstay in the feminist literary canon.

What's Next?

Looking for more expert guides on literary classics? Read our guides on The Cask of Amontillado and The Great Gatsby .

Need important and interesting quotes? Check out these 18 To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes and 9 Great Mark Twain Quotes .

For help analyzing literature and writing essays , read our expert guide on imagery , literary elements , and writing an argumentative essay .

Carrie holds a Bachelors in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, and is currently pursuing an MFA. She worked in book publishing for several years, and believes that books can open up new worlds. She loves reading, the outdoors, and learning about new things.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

“The Yellow Wallpaper” Summary

If you are tasked with writing an essay or a paper on "The Yellow Wallpaper," you may need to delve deeper into the themes and motifs of the story. The book is told from the perspective of the narrator as she describes her confinement to a room at the top of a summer house and her gradual obsession with the yellow wallpaper that ultimately drives her to madness. This literary work is considered one of the first works of early American feminist literature and provides insights into the attitudes towards women's mental health in the late 19th century.

If you're struggling to write a paper on this topic, you may want to consider using a "do my essay for me " or " write my admission essay " service . These services can provide you with professional guidance and help you craft a well-written essay that impresses your professor.

As you explore the themes and motifs of the story, you may want to touch on concepts that are still relevant today, such as the role of women in society and marriage, the attitudes towards mental health issues, and questions about identity. A professional coursework writing service or a custom writing service can help you to better understand these themes and provide you with insights into how to analyze them in your essay.

By utilizing these services, you can ensure that your essay on "The Yellow Wallpaper" is well-written, insightful, and earns you a high grade. Don't let the complexity of the story hold you back - get the help you need today and succeed academically.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” Plot Overview

“The Yellow Wallpaper” starts with the narrator’s first diary entry . She begins with a description of the house that her husband has rented for them over the summer, a massive hereditary mansion far from town. Her husband John is a highly practical man and a well-known physician. It was on his recommendation that they rented a peaceful house for the summer while their own house underwent renovations. 

Though she feels sick he dismisses her worries as a “slight hysterical tendency”. He prescribes complete rest, even from social interactions and any intellectual work including writing. Though she disagrees, she feels powerless to do anything about it. John is the one who decided to rent the house and chose the room at the top of the house as their bedroom, where the narrator would spend most of her time. 

The narrator believes the room used to be a nursery because of the bars on the windows, probably to ensure that children didn’t accidentally fall out. She notes that the wallpaper seems to be peeled off in places and finds both the yellow color and the pattern ugly, committing every possible artistic sin. As John approaches, she hides her diary. 

The second entry takes place two weeks later. The narrator is falling deeper into depression. John is away for work most days and she has grown to despise the nursery. Even small tasks like getting dressed and entertaining seem challenging to her. We find out that her newborn baby is being taken care of by a nanny and the narrator feels anxious being around the child. 

The narrator’s request to move to a different room had been denied by her husband as was her request to change the wallpaper. Ever practical, he doesn’t see the point of changing the wallpaper for a short-term stay. From the windows of the nursery, she can see the garden, the bay, and a small path from her window on which she sometimes sees people walking. John tells her that it’s just her imagination and that she shouldn’t make up stories. 

She wishes she could have some visitors, or at least write, but John disagrees saying that it would be too much excitement for her. She writes about the wallpaper, how she now sees unblinking eyes and broken necks in the pattern and how disturbing she finds it. She recounts that she used to stay awake as a child imagining the expressions of her furniture. She has started noticing a second, deeper pattern of a formless figure behind the ugly front pattern. 

She describes the room in more detail, noting the scratched floors and large tears in the wallpaper. She suspects that the wallpaper has some power over the inhabitants of the house. She puts the diary away as Jennie, John’s sister who is staying with them to take care of the house approaches. 

The third entry takes place on the evening of the 4th of July after a few family members came to visit. Rather than a welcome distraction, Jennie, John’s sister had taken care of all the arrangements. The narrator feels worse than ever, crying most of the time when she’s alone. John has suggested that if things don’t improve then he may have to send her to another doctor, Weir Mitchel, after the summer, though the narrator doesn’t want to go.

She spends most of her time alone with nothing to do. Sometimes she goes for walks in the garden or sits on the portico, but she spends most of her time in bed staring at the wallpaper. She talks at length about its hypnotic pattern. Never making sense but always hinting at something deeper. She is now fascinated by it, but studying it tires her. 

The fourth entry begins with the revelation that the narrator’s condition is worsening, she spends most of her days lying down and feels too weak to write but felt like she had to do something to express herself. She had tried to ask John if she could spend some time with her cousins but started crying mid-way and was unable to convince him. John carried her up to the nursery in his arms and read to her to try and make her feel more at ease. 

She finds solace in the fact that she is in that room with that wallpaper so that at least her child is spared from being there. The subpattern has become more clear and she now sees a woman lurking in the pattern, though she doesn’t tell John or Jennie about it, rightfully thinking that they would consider her mad.

Struggling with your “The Yellow Wallpaper” Homework?

Get your assignments done by real pros. Save your

precious time and boost your marks with ease.

In the fifth entry , the narrator talks about an interaction she had the night before. In the moonlight, the narrator felt as if the woman lurking in the subpattern was shaking the outer pattern from her attempts to escape. She got out of bed to feel the wallpaper and when she came back her husband was awake. He scolded her for being awake and out of bed so late. She tried to convince him to leave the house, but he said that there are only 3 weeks left in the lease and she’s just being silly. He told her that she’s getting better, but she said that though she might be physically better, her mental state was getting worse. John told her to trust him and went to sleep. She stayed awake for hours staring at the wallpaper. 

In the sixth entry , the narrator has become even more fascinated with the wallpaper. She describes how it changes drastically based on the light. At night the outer pattern becomes bars and the subpattern becomes clear as a woman training to break out. John forces her to lie in bed after every meal and she complies, but she doesn’t sleep, she studies the pattern. She starts being afraid of John. 

She walked in on Jennie touching the wallpaper once and believes Jennie is competing with her to try and understand the wallpaper’s pattern. Jennie says that she had noticed yellow marks on the narrator’s clothes and was just trying to understand where they came from. The narrator concludes the entry by expressing her distrust of both John and Jennie. 

In the seventh entry , the narrator is feeling much better! She feels like her condition is improving and is in a good mood and eats well. John is pleased with the development but the narrator doesn’t tell him that it’s because she is enjoying unraveling the secret of the wallpaper pattern. There is only a week left and she feels confident that she will be able to figure out the pattern before she has to leave. 

In the eighth entry , the narrator says she feels even better though she sleeps most of the day and stays awake at night watching the wallpaper. She now notices a smell that the wallpaper gives off that permeates the house and sticks with her even when she’s out riding horses. She admits to thinking about burning the house down to be rid of the smell but now she’s used to it. She also notices a streak going around the wallpaper and wonders how it was made. 

In the ninth entry , the narrator has confirmed that the outer pattern does indeed shake. The woman behind the pattern shakes it as she crawls around the walls and tries to break out. Sometimes there are many women trying to escape and sometimes only one. She suspects that those that fail are strangled by the pattern.

Did you like our “The Yellow Wallpaper” Summary?

For more help, tap into our pool of professional

writers and get expert essay editing services!

By the tenth entry, the narrator is certain that the woman escapes during the day and it is her that she sees creeping around on the path from her window. She says that no self-respecting woman would creep around in the daytime, and she herself only creeps around when John is out of the house. She wishes that John slept in another room so that she could spend time with the woman at night. 

By the eleventh entry , the narrator has made up her mind about removing the top layer of the wallpaper. She says she has revealed a secret that she can’t tell anyone else, one that she can’t even write about in her diary. John is concerned about her, but she writes that she can see through his pretense of being loving and kind. She believes that the wallpaper has affected both John and Jennie. There are only two days left before they leave the house. 

The final entry starts narrating events the day before they have to leave the house. The narrator has made sure that she will be alone in the room at night. As night falls, she starts tearing into the wallpaper to help the women inside escape. Jennie walks in the next morning and the narrator happily says that “it was out of pure spite”, Jennie believes her and laughs, telling her not to get too tired.

The narrator is obsessed, peeling off the wallpaper even as things are being moved out. When she is alone, she locks the door and throws the key out of the window so that she can continue without interruption. She can’t reach the higher parts of the wall and tries to move the bedstand but fails. She says she is so angry that she wants to jump out the window but the bars are stopping her. 

The narrator starts speaking as if she is a woman behind the wallpaper. She is thrilled to be outside the pattern and starts creeping along with the smudges on the wallpaper. John returns home and tries to break down the door but the narrator yells that that key is under a plant in the garden. When John finally finds the key and opens the door she screams at him that she has gotten out despite the efforts of him and Jane. He faints at the sight of her creeping around the room and she continues to creep around the room over his body. 

This concludes our “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman summary. The book is actually quite short, so read it if you have the chance! This summary covers all the main plot points, but the narrator’s descriptions of the yellow wallpaper and her progression into madness make for fascinating reading. It also gives the reader a peek at what life was like over 100 years ago and it’s quite surprising how similar it is to life now. 

The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The story is attributed to the Gothic horror genre. Still, it looks like the author herself never meant for it to be interpreted that way. Gilman aimed for a realistic description of the later proven to be inadequate “rest cure.” That was a standard method of treating mental breakdown at the author’s time. Today, the story retains its relevance and serves to draw attention to many contemporary phenomena.

The Yellow Wallpaper study guide prepared by our editorial team is an extensive collection of materials necessary for understanding the most famous short story by Gilman. Along with the summary and analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper , you’ll find here short reviews of the key themes, symbols, and literary devices used in the story. There are descriptions of all the characters as well.

💁 All You Need to Know about The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is autobiographical to some extent. An intelligent and sensitive female writer is trying to recover from a nervous breakdown she suffered after giving birth. She secretly writes an account of her lonely day-to-day existence in a rental house. The yellow wallpaper in one of the rooms captures her imagination to the point of complete fixation.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a diary of a woman who is suffering from postpartum depression . She is prescribed the so-called “rest cure.” That leads to her confinement in a limited space with little to no social contact. Having nothing better to do, she fixates on the abhorrent yellow wallpaper in her room and loses her mind.

The Yellow Wallpaper was published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine . The 19th century is considered to be the time of enlightenment and innovation. Still, much was underdeveloped and misunderstood. One of the under-researched things was the physical and mental health of women. The tragedy of an incorrect treatment is illustrated in the story.

Why is The Yellow Wallpaper autobiographical? Gilman comments on it in Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ . There she discloses how her mental health was once in jeopardy . The poor treatment was prescribed to her by a “noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country.” Only after ditching the procedures was she able to recover.

🗺️ The Yellow Wallpaper Study Guide: Navigation

A short summary of the story with pictures that contains the key events of The Yellow Wallpaper .

Summary & Analysis

The detailed summary and analysis of the short story. Active characters and themes.

The Yellow Wallpaper ’s narrator, John, Mary, Jennie, and the Woman – all the characters of the short story described on one page.

Themes & Symbols

The key symbols and themes in The Yellow Wallpaper : freedom of expression, mental illness, and family.

• Quotes Explained

All the important quotations from The Yellow Wallpaper explained on one page.

• Essay Examples

A collection of ideas for your essay on The Yellow Wallpaper : 100% free research paper and essay examples.

• Essay Topics

An extensive list of essay topics on the short story: themes, characters, literary analysis, & more.

Author's Biography

A timeline and a biography of a famous American writer and activist.

Questions & Answers

An extensive list of answers to the most pressing questions about the story.

🔑 The Yellow Wallpaper: Facts

📚 the yellow wallpaper: historical context.

In 1913, the article “ Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper ” was published. It was inspired by the so-called “rest cure” that the doctors applied to treat Gilman’s postpartum melancholy. In 1886, soon after her daughter was born, she was stricken by severe depression.

In her biography, Gilman described her “unbearable inner misery”. The state only worsened with the presence of her baby and husband. Just like the novella’s narrator, Gilman was prescribed the “ rest cure .” She followed all the instructions of her physicians, avoiding any physical and mental activities. However, this treatment didn’t help. It even made her condition worse, leading her to a nervous breakdown.

However, this is something more than a personal story. It’s impossible to analyze the novella without addressing The Yellow Wallpaper ’s historical context. The short story was published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. At the time, the female part of the population still had neither the right to vote nor the right to be independent financially. The novella tells us a lot about the gender roles typical for late 19th-century America .

A scientist was the symbol of the era of breakthroughs. He (for it was always a man) was a pragmatic and learned individual who disregarded any nonsense or weirdness. What he did not understand, he shoved away and out of sight.

Men were the earners. They were also those who commanded the social lives of their families. Women were regarded as soft and vulnerable creatures doomed to conduct home lifestyles. Considered to be inferior to men, many women were denied the recognition for the fruits of their mental labor. The traditional female role was that of a wife, a mother, a servant. On the one hand, the upper-class women were pictured as being frail both physically and mentally. They were advised against straining their fragile minds lest they suffer inevitable physical and mental complications. On the other hand, working-class women were subjected to the same level of strain and hardship in work as their male counterparts. Only they were paid less. On the whole, women were in a very unfair position , where their judgment was wrong a priori. Of course, it was reflected in the medical sphere, too. Gilman portrays this side in her short story. This is what forms The Yellow Wallpaper ’s historical context.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to email

Study Guide Menu

• Summary & Analysis
• Themes & Symbols
• Questions & Answers
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Biography
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, August 13). The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide. https://ivypanda.com/lit/the-yellow-wallpaper/

"The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide." IvyPanda , 13 Aug. 2023, ivypanda.com/lit/the-yellow-wallpaper/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide'. 13 August.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide." August 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/lit/the-yellow-wallpaper/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide." August 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/lit/the-yellow-wallpaper/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Yellow Wallpaper: Study Guide." August 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/lit/the-yellow-wallpaper/.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte perkins gilman, everything you need for every book you read..

Mental Illness and its Treatment

Reading the series of diary entries that make up the story, the reader is in a privileged position to witness the narrator’s evolving and accelerating descent into madness, foreshadowed by her mounting paranoia and obsession with the mysterious figure behind the pattern of the yellow wallpaper.

As the portrayal of a woman’s gradual mental breakdown, The Yellow Wallpaper offers the reader a window into the perception and treatment of mental illness in the late nineteenth…

Gender Roles and Domestic Life

Alongside its exploration of mental illness, The Yellow Wallpaper offers a critique of traditional gender roles as they were defined during the late nineteenth century, the time in which the story is set and was written. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent feminist, who rejected the trappings of traditional domestic life and published extensively about the role of women in society, and saw the gender roles of the time as horribly stifling.

The story’s family…

Outward Appearance vs. Inner Life

Another major theme in the story lies in the contradiction between outward appearance and inner life.

The story’s form, in a series of diary entries, gives the reader a glimpse into its writer’s inner life. This, in turn, allows us to watch as the narrator’s husband misinterprets her condition, and as she begins to consciously deceive both him and Jennie . Our privileged view into the narrator’s mind leads to an appreciation of the sarcasm …

Self-Expression, Miscommunication, and Misunderstanding

Alongside questions of gender and mental illness in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the simple story of a woman who is unable fully to express herself, or to find someone who will listen.

The narrator’s sense that the act of writing, which she has been forbidden to do, is exactly what she needs to feel better suggests this stifled self-expression. Since she is unable to communicate with her husband, this diary becomes a secret outlet for…

Key Quotes from ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Explained

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is an 1892 short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A powerful study of mental illness and the inhuman treatments administered in its name, the story is narrated in the first person by an unnamed woman who is incarcerated in the nursery room of a large house she and her husband have rented.

Her husband believes that locking her away will give her the rest she needs, but it ends up worsening her mental state, until she locks herself inside the nursery in which she is being kept.

Told in the form of a diary the woman is secretly keeping, ‘ The Yellow Wallpaper ’ succeeds in part because of this first-person narrative voice. Let’s take a look at some of the most important and illustrative quotations from Gilman’s story.

‘If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?’

This quotation from early in Gilman’s story establish the crux of the story in one sentence. The narrator’s husband is not only a man – at a time when men had a good deal of control over their wives, including (in many cases) their money and property – but is also a qualified doctor. In other words, she has to trust that he knows best , even if she suspects that his proposed treatment is not going to do her good.

It is easy to view the story as a one-sided feminist account of the powerlessness of women in a male-dominated world, but ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is more nuanced than this assessment implies. Although we can see that her incarceration (for that is what it amounts to) in the nursery at the top of the house is not helping her condition, would a mentally unstable patient or a sane, qualified doctor be the best person to decide what is ‘best’ for the patient?

Of course, in this case, the narrator does know best, but as well as being a work of feminist literature, Gilman’s story is also at bottom a tragedy about the ways in which well-intentioned people – such as doctors who want to help their wives – can sometimes get it terribly wrong.

‘The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.’

Gilman’s story contains some very revealing descriptions of the titular yellow wallpaper. The narrator is simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by it (see below for her attempts to describe its peculiar odour).

This description comes early on in the story, not long after the narrator has been placed inside the nursery at the top of the house she is renting with her husband. At this point, her account of the wallpaper’s appearance is fairly objective and straightforwardly descriptive: although words like ‘repellent’ and ‘revolting’ clearly indicate a particular response to the paper, they are not a million miles away from the kind of observation an ‘omniscient’ and detached third-person narrator might make in a work of realist fiction.

However, this objectivity will be abandoned in later diary entries, as the quotations below make clear.

‘There comes John, and I must put this away, – he hates to have me write a word.’

The narrative style of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is as intrinsic to the story’s ‘message’ as the ‘plot’ or action itself. Having the woman narrate her own story and her own observations about the room in which she is (effectively) imprisoned, in order to ‘cure’ her, allows us an unfiltered insight into her own mental state.

The quotation mentioned above is also a key one in the story because it directly invites us to consider whether the woman’s diary-keeping is doing her good. She descends further into madness as the story progresses, but that descent isn’t necessarily hastened by her writing: indeed, it might even help her to retain some fragments of sanity amidst her illness.

On the other hand, perhaps writing her diary allows her imagination free rein and it does actually worsen her state, since it allows her even more time with her own thoughts. Rather than writing about things she remembers outside the room, she finds herself obsessively writing about the nursery and its wallpaper.

‘And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder – I begin to think – I wish John would take me away from here!’

The verb ‘creeping’ comes at us again and again in this short story. It suggests surreptitious movement – echoing the narrator’s own clandestine writing of her secret diary – but it also creates an unsettling tone.

It is another reminder of the narrator’s unsettled and disordered mind, suggesting as it does something out of sight but sensed on the fringes of consciousness – a movement that we are aware of without being able to see it.

‘It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.’

The narrator becomes obsessed with not only the moving shapes she thinks she can see in the wallpaper, and its foul smell, but also its yellowness – a colour which here symbolises sickliness, unwholesomeness, and perhaps even putrid decay. The narrator ends up abandoning her attempt to describe the strange smell of the paper, simply labelling it a ‘yellow smell’.

‘It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.’

This late entry to her diary reveals to us that the narrator has descended completely into madness. She believes the woman behind the wallpaper comes out from behind it during the day and creeps around. But the narrator’s remark that ‘most women do not creep by daylight’ is interesting because it reveals something about her attitudes to her own sex.

In other words, since we know the creeping woman is nothing more than a figment of her disordered mind, and that it is probably on some level a reflection of herself, is it really true that ‘most women’ do not creep during daylight? Or are they not forced by society to act cautiously and even quietly so they do not attract too much attention, or lest their husbands think they need locking up?

‘It does not do to trust people too much.’

Written about the diary she is keeping, these words are – as with so much of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ – multi-layered. On the one hand, they reveal her neuroticism and paranoia, but on the other, she is justified in being wary, since her husband has forbidden her to keep the diary and is closely monitoring her behaviour.

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

The Yellow Wall-Paper

Charlotte perkins gilman, edited by jack lynch.

The story was first published in 1892 in The New England Magazine , and then in 1899 by Small & Maynard, Boston, Mass. This electronic edition has been hastily cobbled together from a few other electronic editions; I’ve not yet had the chance to proof it or compare it to the early editions. Be patient. The paragraph numbers have been added for ease of reference

[1] It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

[2] A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity — but that would be asking too much of fate!

[3] Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

[4] Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

[5] John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

[6] John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

[7] John is a physician, and perhaps — (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind —) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

[8] You see he does not believe I am sick!

[9] And what can one do?

[10] If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency — what is one to do?

[11] My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

[12] So I take phosphates or phosphites — whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.

[13] Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

[14] Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

[15] But what is one to do?

[16] I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal — having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.

[17] I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus — but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.

[18] So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

[19] The most beautiful place! It is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.

[20] There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden — large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.

[21] There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

[22] There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

[23] That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don’t care — there is something strange about the house — I can feel it.

[24] I even said so to John one moonlight evening but he said what I felt was a draught , and shut the window.

[25] I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

[26] But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself — before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.

[27] I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.

[28] He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.

[29] He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.

[30] I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

[31] He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. “Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear,” said he, “and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery at the top of the house.

[32] It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

[33] The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off — the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

[34] One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

[35] It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

[36] The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

[37] It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

[38] No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

[40] We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing before, since that first day.

[41] I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

[42] John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.

[43] I am glad my case is not serious!

[44] But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

[45] John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

[46] Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!

[47] I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!

[48] Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, — to dress and entertain, and order things.

[49] It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!

[50] And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.

[51] I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper!

[52] At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

[53] He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.

[54] “You know the place is doing you good,” he said, “and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental.”

[55] “Then do let us go downstairs,” I said, “there are such pretty rooms there.”

[56] Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.

[57] But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

[58] It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.

[59] I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.

[60] Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.

[61] Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.

[62] I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

[63] But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

[64] It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

[65] I wish I could get well faster.

[66] But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

[67] There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

[68] I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breaths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

[69] I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

[70] I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.

[71] I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

[72] The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.

[73] The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother — they must have had perseverance as well as hatred.

[74] Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

[75] But I don’t mind it a bit — only the paper.

[76] There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.

[77] She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!

[78] But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.

[79] There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

[80] This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.

[81] But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so — I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

[83] Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are all gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

[84] Of course I didn’t do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.

[85] But it tired me all the same.

[86] John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.

[87] But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!

[88] Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

[89] I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

[89] I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

[90] Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.

[91] And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.

[92] So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.

[93] I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.

[94] It dwells in my mind so!

[95] I lie here on this great immovable bed — it is nailed down, I believe — and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

[96] I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

[97] It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

[98] Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes — a kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium tremens — go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

[99] But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

[100] The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

[101] They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

[102] There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, — the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

[104] I don’t know why I should write this.

[105] I don’t want to.

[106] I don’t feel able. And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief!

[107] But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

[108] Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.

[109] John says I mustn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.

[110] Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

[111] But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.

[112] It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.

[113] And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.

[114] He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

[115] He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.

[116] There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.

[117] If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn’t have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

[118] I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.

[119] Of course I never mention it to them any more — I am too wise, — but I keep watch of it all the same.

[120] There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

[121] Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

[122] It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

[124] It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

[125] But I tried it last night.

[126] It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.

[127] I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

[128] John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.

[129] The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.

[130] I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake.

[131] “What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that — you’ll get cold.”

[132] I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.

[133] “Why darling!” said he, “our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.

[134] “The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you.”

[135] “I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away!”

[136] “Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!”

[137] “And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.

[138] “Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really dear you are better!”

[139] “Better in body perhaps —” I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

[140] “My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

[142] On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

[143] The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

[144] You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

[145] The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions — why, that is something like it.

[146] That is, sometimes!

[147] There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.

[148] When the sun shoots in through the east window — I always watch for that first long, straight ray — it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.

[149] That is why I watch it always.

[150] By moonlight — the moon shines in all night when there is a moon — I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

[151] At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

[152] I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

[153] By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

[154] I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.

[155] Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.

[156] It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don’t sleep.

[157] And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake — O no!

[158] The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.

[159] He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

[160] It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, — that perhaps it is the paper!

[161] I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

[162] She didn’t know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper — she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry — asked me why I should frighten her so!

[163] Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John’s, and she wished we would be more careful!

[165] Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.

[166] John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper.

[167] I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wall-paper — he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away.

[169] I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.

[170] In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.

[171] There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.

[172] It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

[173] But there is something else about that paper — the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

[174] It creeps all over the house.

[175] I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

[176] It gets into my hair.

[177] Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it — there is that smell!

[178] Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.

[179] It is not bad — at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

[180] In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.

[181] It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house — to reach the smell.

[182] But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell.

[183] There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch , as if it had been rubbed over and over.

[185] I really have discovered something at last.

[186] Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.

[187] The front pattern does move — and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

[188] Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.

[189] Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.

[190] And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern — it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.

[191] They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!

[193] I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

[194] And I’ll tell you why — privately — I’ve seen her!

[195] I can see her out of every one of my windows!

[196] It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

[197] I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

[198] I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

[199] I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.

[200] And John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.

[201] I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.

[202] But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.

[203] And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn!

[205] If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.

[206] I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.

[207] There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.

[208] And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give.

[209] She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

[210] John knows I don’t sleep very well at night, for all I’m so quiet!

[211] He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.

[212] As if I couldn’t see through him!

[213] Still, I don’t wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.

[215] Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John to stay in town over night, and won’t be out until this evening.

[216] Jennie wanted to sleep with me — the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

[217] That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

[218] I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

[219] A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

[220] And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day!

[221] We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before.

[222] Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

[223] She laughed and said she wouldn’t mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.

[224] How she betrayed herself that time!

[225] But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me, — not alive!

[226] She tried to get me out of the room — it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner — I would call when I woke.

[227] So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.

[228] We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow.

[229] I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

[230] How those children did tear about here!

[231] This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

[232] But I must get to work.

[233] I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.

[234] I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes.

[235] I want to astonish him.

[236] I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

[237] But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

[238] This bed will not move!

[239] I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner — but it hurt my teeth.

[240] Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

[241] I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

[242] Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

[243] I don’t like to look out of the windows even — there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

[244] I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?

[245] But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope — you don’t get me out in the road there!

[246] I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!

[247] It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!

[248] I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to.

[249] For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.

[250] But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.

[251] Why there’s John at the door!

[252] It is no use, young man, you can’t open it!

[253] How he does call and pound!

[254] Now he’s crying for an axe.

[255] It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

[256] “John dear!” said I in the gentlest voice, “the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!”

[257] That silenced him for a few moments.

[258] Then he said — very quietly indeed, “Open the door, my darling!”

[259] “I can’t,” said I. “The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!”

[260] And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.

[261] “What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing!”

[262] I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

[263] “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”

This text has been prepared by Jack Lynch . You’re welcome to use it for non-exclusive and nonprofit purposes.