The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
STORY SUMMARY
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person narrative told through a series of journal entries written by an unnamed woman who is suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband, John, a physician, prescribes a “rest cure,” confining her to the upstairs bedroom of a secluded mansion and forbidding her from writing, working, or engaging in any stimulating activity.
The woman becomes fixated on the room’s yellow wallpaper, which she initially finds ugly and oppressive. As the story progresses, her mental state deteriorates. She begins to imagine that there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper’s pattern, struggling to break free. Eventually, she identifies with the trapped woman, believing she herself has escaped the wallpaper by peeling it off and creeping around the room.
The story ends ambiguously, with the narrator fully descending into madness while her husband faints upon seeing her crawling
around the room, declaring that she is finally free.
LITERARY ANALYSIS
Narrative Structure and Point of View
The story uses a first-person, epistolary-style narrative (in the form of secret journal entries), allowing intimate access to the protagonist’s psychological breakdown. This limited, subjective perspective emphasizes the unreliability of perception and the interior experience of mental illness. The reader is drawn into her mind, unable to rely on objective reality.
Themes
• Gender and Patriarchal Control: The story critiques the power imbalance between men and women, especially within marriage and medicine. John’s paternalistic treatment infantilizes his wife and strips her of autonomy. His refusal to take her seriously contributes directly to her mental collapse.
• Mental Health and Misdiagnosis: The protagonist’s descent into psychosis illustrates the dangers of ignoring women’s mental health needs and the inadequacy of contemporary medical practices. The “rest cure,” which Gilman herself underwent,
is depicted not as therapeutic but as destructive.
• Freedom vs. Confinement: The woman is literally confined to a room and metaphorically imprisoned by societal expectations of femininity and obedience. The wallpaper becomes a symbol of this oppressive structure— and her eventual rebellion.
• The Power of Imagination and Expression: Forbidden from writing or working, the narrator’s creative energy becomes displaced onto the wallpaper, leading to obsession and psychosis. Gilman suggests that suppressing a woman’s voice and intellect can have devastating consequences.
Symbolism
• The Yellow Wallpaper: A central and multifaceted symbol, it represents the oppressive structures that trap women—social, marital, and medical. The shifting, grotesque patterns mirror the narrator’s growing instability.
• The Woman in the Wallpaper: She becomes an extension of the narrator herself—a figure struggling to break free from imprisonment. This doubling effect illustrates the fracturing of identity under oppression.
• The Room: Formerly a nursery with barred windows and rings in the walls, the room
resembles a prison or asylum more than a healing space. It reflects the infantilization and control exerted over the narrator.
Historical Context
Gilman wrote the story in response to her own experience with postpartum depression and the rest cure prescribed by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. The story was a radical feminist statement for its time, challenging the dominant medical and cultural narratives about women’s roles and minds.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
1. How does the use of first-person narration affect your understanding of the narrator’s condition?
2. What does the wallpaper symbolize? How does the symbolism evolve throughout the story?
3. In what ways is the story a critique of 19th-century gender roles and medical practices?
4. Does the narrator’s final “freedom” at the end of the story read as a victory, a tragedy, or both?