THE YELLOW WALLPAPER // CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

The narrator of this story and her husband John are renting a beautiful, secluded estate for the summer. The narrator suffers from what her husband refers to as a "temporary nervous depression," and orders her to rest as much as possible instead of going outside and being active. He picks a room in the house for the two of them and although the narrator feels quite uncomfortable with this, she accepts his decision to stay there. She also obeys him when he chooses a large room at the top of the house over the smaller, prettier room on the ground floor that she prefers. The narrator would like to spend her time writing and exploring her creativity, but her husband and other family members think this is a bad idea. Bored with being locked in a room all day, the woman begins to trace the pattern of the room’s wallpaper methodically and soon convinces herself that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper. Just before the couple are about to leave the house, she decides that she must free the trapped woman by stripping the wallpaper off. When her husband comes into the room, the narrator declares that the woman is now free, wallpaper scattered on the ground.

This story deals with the unequal status of women within marriage, and women stifled by a paternalistic culture. It does this through the completely disregarded concept of women's mental health in the 19th century. The female protagonist is completely controlled by her husband, and any attempt for her to break free of his reign is stifled, as well as her creative desires. She must agree with him on every subject, as if she didn't she would be betraying her gender and role as a woman. It was a story written at a time of great change — the time of the ‘domestic ideology’ that placed American middle class women as the 'leaders of the home' and men 'ruling the public domain' started to be challenged as the early women’s rights movements began. In the 1890s–1910s women pushed for broader roles outside these gendered roles that could draw on women's intelligence and non-domestic skills and talents, which Gilman explores in her story. Gilman herself was a victim of being prescribed ‘bed rest’ by her doctor when diagnosed with depression, and wrote this story as a semi-autobiographical story reflecting on her experiences.