The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (3 July 1860 – 17 August 1935, aged 75), also known as Charlotte
Anna Perkins, Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman, and Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman, was
an American feminist, lecturer, writer, and publisher who was a leading theorist of the women’s
movement in America. She began writing poems and stories for various periodicals after her
move to California. Among her stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in The New England
Magazine in January 1892, was exceptional for its starkly realistic first-person portrayal of the
mental breakdown of a physically pampered but emotionally starved young wife. (Britannica,
2024).

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”

To be concise, “The Yellow Wallpaper” talks about how the protagonist, the narrator’s mental
condition ends worse with the confinement given by his husband, John along with her every right
restricted.

Simple plot diagram

 Expedition:
o The narrator and her husband John, a doctor, have come to stay at a large
country house, to try to cure her of her mental illness (he has told her that repairs
are being carried out on their home, which is why they have had to relocate to a
mansion).
o His solution, or treatment, is isolation except him and to forbid her anything that
might excite her, such as writing. (She writes an account of what happens to her
and the effect it has on her, in secret, hiding her pen and paper when her husband
or his sister comes into the room.)
o John’s suggested treatment for his wife also extends to relieving her of maternal
duties: their baby is taken out of her hands and looked after by John’s sister,
Jennie. Jennie also does all the cooking and housework.
 o Short: The narrator is confined by John, her husband, from everything she
wants, including her role as mother and housewife was taken care of by
Jennie, John’s sister.
 Rising Action
o It becomes clear, as the story develops, that depriving the female narrator of
anything to occupy her mind is making her mental illness worse, not better.
o The narrator confides that she cannot even cry in her husband’s company, or when
anyone else is present because that will be interpreted as a sign that her condition
is worsening – and her husband has promised (threatened?) to send her to another
doctor, Weir Mitchell, if her condition doesn’t show signs of improving. And
according to a female friend who has been treated by him, Weir Mitchell is like
her husband and brother, but stricter.
o The narrator then outlines in detail how she sometimes sits for hours on end in her
room, tracing the patterns in the yellow wallpaper. She then tells us she thinks she
can see a woman ‘stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.’ At this
point, she changes her mind and goes from being fond of the pattern in the yellow
wallpaper to wishing she could go away from the place.
o She tells John that she isn’t getting any better in this house and that she would like
to leave, but he tells her she is looking healthier and that they cannot return home
for another three weeks until their lease is up and the ‘repairs’ at home have been
completed.
o Despondent, the narrator tells us how she is becoming more obsessed with the
yellow wallpaper, especially at night when she is unable to sleep and so lies
awake watching the pattern in the wallpaper, which she says resembles a fungus.
o Short: As the day goes on, her mental illness gets worse due to John’s control
and her obsession with the yellow wallpaper becoming more and more.
 Climax
o She starts to fear her husband. She becomes paranoid that her husband and sister-
in-law, Jennie, are trying to decipher the pattern in the yellow wallpaper, and she
becomes determined to beat them to it. (Jennie was checking the wallpaper
because she thought it was staining their clothes; this is the reason she gives to the
 narrator when asked about it, anyway. However, the more likely reason is that she
and John have noticed the narrator’s obsession with looking at the wallpaper and
are becoming concerned.)
o Next, the narrator tells us she has noticed the strange smell of the wallpaper and
tells us she seriously considered burning down the house to try to solve the
mystery of what she smell was. She concludes that it is simply ‘a yellow smell!’
We now realize that the narrator is losing her mind rather badly.
o She becomes convinced that the ‘woman behind’ the yellow wallpaper is shaking
it, thus moving the front pattern of the paper. She says she has seen this woman
creeping about the grounds of the house during the day; she returns to behind the
wallpaper at night.
o The narrator then tells us that she believes John and Jennie have become
‘affected’ by the wallpaper – that they are losing their minds from being exposed
to it. So, the narrator begins stripping the yellow wallpaper from the walls, much
to Jennie’s consternation. John has his wife’s things moved out of the room, ready
for them to leave the house. While John is out, the narrator locks herself inside the
now bare room and throws the key out the window, so she cannot be disturbed.
o Short: The narrator fears her husband and slowly becomes paranoid that the
yellow wallpaper has something odd that not only herself feels it, but also
John and Jennie start to affect themselves with it.
 Resolution
o She has become convinced that there are many creeping women roaming the
grounds of the house, all of them originating from behind the yellow wallpaper
and that she is one of them. The story ends with her husband banging on the door
to be let in, fetching the key when she tells him it’s down by the front door mat,
and bursting into the room – whereupon he faints, at the sight of his wife creeping
around the room.
o Short: In the end, she thought herself also one of the creeping women from
the yellow wallpaper. Her husband opened the locked door and found out the
narrator creeping around the room.
Symbolism

Throughout the story, the yellow wallpaper that the narrator mentions in the Story “The Yellow
Wallpaper” symbolizes her worsened mental condition. For instance, “I suppose I shall have to
get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” that happens at the end of the
story. Due to the ‘restriction’ given by her husband, John, the narrator starts to attract herself with
the yellow wallpaper, which resembles a self-reflection of her mental condition. As the days go
on, she sees the odd happening on the wallpaper, which is another way to present her worsening
mental state. The ‘isolation’ brings the narrator’s mental condition linked with the vision and
mind, which ended up saying that she might be one of the creeping women that crawls out of the
wallpaper.

Reference:

https://www.owleyes.org/text/yellow-wallpaper/read/yellow-wallpaper#root-422327-143

https://interestingliterature.com/2023/02/gilman-yellow-wallpaper-symbolism/