The Yellow Wallpaper

Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman first published in 1892. The story touches upon themes of patriarchy, misogyny, identity, disenfranchisement, and mental illness. Told from the perspective of a first-person narrator, the reader gets a glimpse into the effect of patriarchy on individual women and on women collectively. The story begins when the narrator and her husband John spend the summer in a holiday house. The narrator admits that she has "temporary nervous depression," but that her husband, even though he is a physician, does not recognize that she is sick. Instead, he believes that his wife should simply refrain from all work, including writing, and be house bound. When she protests, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." Thus, Gilman makes a poignant statement about the nature of heterosexual marriage within the first few sentences of the short story. The summer home is splendid -- the family is well-to-do. The grounds are gorgeously manicured, and the narrator seems like she could like it there when, her husband decides that it would be best if she remained trapped inside the house in none other than the children's nursery room on the top floor. Thus equating his wife with a child, John reveals the extent of his misogyny and his complete disrespect for the woman he married. If the narrator was already depressed at the beginning of the story, she now descends deep and fast into a pit of personal despair.

The narrator even blames herself, internalizing her confused feelings of anger and guilt. She feels guilty for thinking negative thoughts of her husband, and tries to convince herself -- and the reader -- that he has her best interest at heart. Continually, she claims that he loves her and wants her to get better. The narrator also states, "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." The reader, sympathizing with the narrator, wants her to get angry and revolt. This, the narrator never does. Instead, she allows the pain and anguish to eat away at her until toward the end of the story, she literally picks away at the yellow wallpaper in the nursery. The wallpaper is a "sickly sulphur tint" and "lurid orange" in others. The nursery is clearly depicted as a type of prison made all the more torturous given the "delicious garden" and lovely breezes that her captor bars her from experiencing.