Summary and Analysis of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman and was first published in New England Magazine in 1892. It is an important piece of feminist literature and is frequently anthologized and studied.

Based on the author’s own experiences, The Yellow Wallpaper describes a woman’s struggle with postpartum depression, the ineffective rest cure that is prescribed to her, and its consequences. Feminist scholars view the story as a comment on the position and role of women in society at the time and the impact that had on the psyche of individual women.

Summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

The story is narrated through a series of journal entries written by an unnamed young woman. She and her husband, John, have recently begun to occupy what she describes as a “colonial mansion.” She is not sure how they have been able to afford it and believes that it is possible only because there is something “queer” about the house. Her ideas are laughed off by John as fantasies, and he tells her not indulge them.

The narrator is suffering from nervous depression and is receiving treatment for it from her husband, who is a doctor. Her brother is a physician as well and agrees with the treatment that she is being given. However, she herself is not convinced that it is helping her. She has been prescribed to take a few “phosphates” and tonics and to rest completely without attempting any kind of work, including writing. She is maintaining this journal in secret as it is not allowed for her to do so. 

According to her, the problem is that her husband doesn’t really believe that she is sick. And since her brother agrees, it is her word against that of two respected physicians who are, in fact, related to her. Therefore, she complies with the instructions that she is given, except in the case of the journal.

The narrator is undergoing treatment for depression, but thinks that her doctor - who is also her husband - is not taking her complaints seriously.

In the meantime, she feels that she is unable to control her emotions and frequently gets upset with John. In particular, she does not like the room in the house that he is insisting they use as their bedroom. It is on the upper floor of the house and has two large windows offering beautiful views onto the opposite sides of the house. It is furnished with mismatched items that have been brought up from various other rooms in the house, and its walls are covered with a yellow wallpaper that has an intricately detailed wallpaper. It is the furniture and the wallpaper that bother her at first.

The narrator assumes that at one point of time the room had been used as a playroom, probably for boys. It explains the lack of furniture before they brought in items from other rooms. It also explains to her the state of the wallpaper that has been torn off and spoiled in different spots around the room. According to her, the damage is justified as the wallpaper, especially, draws her ire; she absolutely hates both the pattern and the color.

When she shares her feelings with John, he attributes them once again to fantasies and her highly active imagination. He refuses to switch rooms either, since none of the others are large enough. He also reminds her that they came to this house to help her get better, and part of the prescription is that she gets enough good air. This is best available in this room, and thus it is the room they should take.

As the weeks pass, she begins to settle into the house. She has grown more comfortable here but feels lonely since John has to leave for long periods of time. It is also revealed that she has a small baby, but that she does not take care of it, since she is probably not allowed to. A maid, Mary, attends to it instead and is very good at her job. 

With regards to her room, the narrator has made peace with the furniture but continues to feel a deep dislike for the wallpaper. She asks John to get rid of it, but he refuses, saying that would just be an indulgence of her fantasies and that doing so would only be feeding them. He believes that if they did get rid of the wallpaper, instead of being appeased, her frustration would likely shift to other items in the room. 

Her uneasy reaction to the wallpaper is dismissed as being due to her active imagination.

The narrator has also begun to imagine that she sees people strolling in the gardens outside, and John once again asks that she exert greater self-control. She thinks that writing could help her get her ideas under control, but the activity is very tiring. She is promised that when she feels better, John will invite her cousins for a long visit but that, currently, it is not a good idea as she is too excitable. 

In the meantime, the pattern on the yellow wallpaper continues to occupy her mind and she feels that it has several upside-down heads with eyes that are staring down at her in a menacing way. It reminds her of her childhood when she used to imagine that various pieces of furniture in the house she grew up in had emotion and interacted with her in small ways. But while they were friendly and comforting, this wallpaper frightens her. 

The reader is also made aware that John’s sister, Jennie, lives with them. She has taken on the role of housekeeper, taking care of the household while also looking after the narrator in John’s absence. She too believes that writing makes the narrator sick.

For the Fourth of July, they had family over to celebrate, but their visit leaves the narrator worn out. John informs her that if her condition doesn’t improve soon, he plans on sending her to another physician, Weir Mitchell. This upsets her because she does not want to consult this doctor; a friend of hers had consulted him and claims that his approach is very much like John’s, only more practical and cold.

The narrator feels that her mental state has not improved; rather, it has worsened instead. This she attributes to the wallpaper, with which she has grown more and more obsessed. She spends almost the whole day tracing its pattern. It makes no sense to her as it does not follow any of the rules of design that she is aware of. 

Her nervous condition has begun to take a toll on her physical health and strength. She wants to go visit her cousins, but John doesn’t let her as she is weak; she strengthens his case by breaking down crying. He tries to console her and encourages her to get better for his sake and their baby’s.

The narrator is glad that the baby is not brought to her room. She doesn’t think that seeing the hideous wallpaper would be good for it. The wallpaper has grown more sinister as she spends more time studying it: she has recognized a second, fainter pattern beneath the main one. This second pattern resembles a woman who is creeping around.

There is also a difference in the patterns in the daytime and during the night. During the night, the woman in the second pattern struggles with the bars formed by the pattern on top, trying to get out. During the day, it seems she is able to creep around and escape. The narrator believes she’s glimpsed the woman in the garden even.

As her condition worsens, the obsession with the wallpaper grows, and she begins to hallucinate that a woman is stuck in it.

At the same time, the narrator is growing more paranoid. She believes that John and Jennie too are aware of the strangeness of the wallpaper but, for some reason, they do not acknowledge it when she brings it up. Instead, they disregard her concern, attributing it to her mental state, while they themselves contemplate the wallpaper, touching and smudging it even. 

The narrator decides that she needs to tear down the paper herself. She gets an opportunity the next day, shortly before they are to leave the house, and locks herself in the room. As she goes about biting and ripping the wallpaper, she slips deeper and deeper into insanity. She believes that there is not one, but several women trapped in the wallpaper, and that she herself is one of them and has come out of it. By the time John is able to get the door unlocked, she has begun to creep around the room. He faints, and she continues to crawl about, forced to “creep over him.”

Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper

Now a classic of feminist literature, The Yellow Wallpaper is also a Gothic horror story. It involves a descent into madness and a house that, to the narrator at least, has a creepy quality—maybe a dramatic past involving a death among its previous occupants. The central feature of the story is the wallpaper put up in a seemingly isolated room on the top floor of the house, which also has bars across its windows. Very early on, the themes of imprisonment and of being trapped are set up. 

The short story was written to capture and dramatize Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s experience with the rest cure, a popular course of treatment adopted by most physicians during the 19th century to address “nervous ailments” that were prevalent among women. The patient was strictly forbidden from engaging in any sort of work, light or laborious, and was expected to remain practically confined to her bed. Clearly, Gilman’s experience was not a good one; instead of helping her, the rest cure removed the welcome distraction that work might have provided her. The author had consulted a prominent doctor, Silas Weir Mitchell whom she mentions in the story, and eventually had to stop as her mental state grew worse.

While the story was initially accepted as primarily a criticism of the rest cure, over the years, the field of feminist literature has hailed it as one of its most illustrative pieces. Now, The Yellow Wallpaper is studied as a comment on the prescribed role of women in 19th century society and its consequences on the individual mind. 

The author wrote the story as a criticism of the then popular rest cure treatment used to address depression in women.

Through this lens, the narrator is not just representative of a patient of nervous depression; rather, she is representative of every woman at the time. Patriarchal society expected women to remain confined to the domestic space, with little or no other intellectual stimulation. 

And this structure was so ingrained that it continued to be enforced without questioning. John, here, became representative of all men at the time. He is not the overt villain of the story. In spite of being the enforcer of the rest cure on the narrator, he has no ulterior motives. He is a relatively good husband and appears to be sincere in his hope for his wife’s recovery. However, societal conditioning prevents him from recognizing that he is causing her more harm than good.

Gender roles were firmly ingrained in 19th century American society and were accepted by the vast majority of the public - men and women - without being questioned.

The majority of men at the time agreed with and propagated the system because that is what they had been taught and were familiar with. On the other hand, this rendered them unable to appreciate what the women around them were probably going through, especially those who were naturally curious and intellectually inclined. The rise in conditions such as depression and its various forms were not properly understood by them. In fact, several of the women themselves were not able to recognize that the root of their problems lay in being confined or “imprisoned” by the societal system, as they too had grown up with it and imbibed it. 

The narrator’s slide into mania is a symbol for her growing awareness of her situation. As the patterns in the wallpaper begin to assume the shape of a trapped woman, the narrator has probably realized that her state is like that of all other women—trapped and imprisoned in the domestic space with restricted freedom to visit and experience the outside world. This new consciousness is aggravated by the rest cure she is undergoing. Soon, the trapped woman is not alone, there are others. Eventually, the narrator counts herself among them.

The realization of the confined nature of her reality caused the narrator to have a breakdown.

Her final snap, when she destroys the wallpaper and then crawls around the room, is a reflection of her horror at her realization. Her reality is a terrifying one, and the only way she can deal with it is by dissociating with herself and succumbing to madness.

Another way of reading the story’s ending would be a triumphant one: the narrator’s madness is not a succumbing to the oppression of her reality but rather a freedom from it. Whenever someone deviates from the societal norm, they are regarded as mad and cast out. And by embracing the madness, the narrator has freed herself from the dictates of her husband and, by extension, of her society.

Characters in The Yellow Wallpaper

The Narrator: The narrator is a young woman who is probably suffering from postpartum depression and is writing her diary in secret. She has recently come to occupy a scenic house along with her husband, John. Due to her condition, she has been prescribed complete rest (a popular remedy at the time), which appears to be making her worse rather than curing her. She is forced to inhabit a room with the eponymous yellow wallpaper, and it is this that is occupying her waking hours. Both its color and its pattern disgust her, but she cannot help but be fascinated by it to the point of obsession.

The obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her room is due to the mental condition of the narrator, combined with a lack of any other stimulation.

As she progressively gets worse, she believes that there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper who escapes it and crawls about the house and grounds during the day. At night, she is once again stuck behind the wallpaper’s pattern and is engaged in trying to get out. Soon, in the narrator’s mind, this single woman becomes several women and, at the height of her delusions, she starts to think that she herself has come from this wallpaper. She blames John and a “Jane” for having trapped her there, but now she is “free.” 

Throughout the story, the narrator does not name herself. However, according to some scholars, the narrator might be the “Jane” mentioned at the end of the story. This indicates that in her current state, the narrator has completely dissociated from herself and her external reality. 

John: John is the narrator’s husband and a respected doctor. As a medical professional, he is overseeing her recovery. However, it is key to note that his wife does not think that he believes her or takes her condition very seriously. This is likely representative of 19th century attitudes towards mental health issues.

John is the typical 19th century man with views that are sincere, but ultimately unhelpful to his wife.

While he is not a malicious character and is truly trying to help his wife, John is unable to understand her state of mind. He frequently infantilizes her, dismissing her concerns and desires as not to be taken seriously. His attitude towards her complaints about their room and the wallpaper is that it’s all in her head. 

As the narrator’s condition grew worse, she withdrew from the external world; this is reflected in her tranquilized demeanor. This causes John to believe that she is getting better. Thus, when he witnesses her frenzied and manic behavior at the end—locking herself in her room and then creeping around it—it horrifies him to the point of fainting.

Jeannie: She is John’s sister and has accompanied the couple to the house. She lives with them and acts as the housekeeper while the narrator is recuperating. 

Jennie views her brother’s approach to the narrator’s condition as the authoritative one and, in his absence, functions as his proxy: he had forbidden his wife from exerting herself in any way, including writing, and Jennie ensures that the narrator does not do so when he is not home. 

However, unlike John, she realizes that the narrator may not be as well as he believes her to be.

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