The Yellow Wallpaper

The yellow wallpaper is a story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in about 1890 during her lifetime of 1860-1935.The yellow wallpaper is about a woman who is diagnosed by her husband as being "sick" or mentally unstable. Her husband John takes her into the country side where they rent a house for three months in the summer in hopes of the fresh air and new surroundings helping her to get better. The room in which they are staying has old ragged yellow wallpaper, all the windows are barred, there is one bed in the room that is nailed to the floor, and it appears as though the room use to be either a child's play room or nursery. The first impression the wife has about the room she is going to be staying in is very negative, she wants all the wallpaper changed, and the windows unbarred. As time goes on though she begins to like the room exactly the way it is. She studies the wallpaper and begins to notice that there are two different patterns, there is a pattern on top and then another behind. The top pattern appears as though it is bars holding in the women that make up the second pattern. Each day she studies the pattern more and more, she begins to lay awake at night studying the pattern and trying to free the women behind it. Month after month she does this and she begins to seem more mentally unstable, but her overall health is better. The story draws to a conclusion as the husband enters home on the last day before their lease is up and for some reason when he enters the house and sees his wife he is stuck in fear, astonishment, or such that he passes out and his wife is left there creeping about the house along the wall searching the wallpaper.