in this story the narrator feels uneasy on the estate she and her husband John have rented for the summer. John uses the old, “trust me, I’m a doctor” line to convince his wife and all their relatives that the narrator needs to rest in order to get rid of her slight depression. The narrator wishes to spend her time writing and socializing, but her husband tells her she must rest. The narrator thinks that writing and hanging out with friends would be a better cure, but Mr. “trust me, I’m a doctor” wins the day. The narrator occasionally sneaks around and writes, but it’s hard when her husband and family oppose it. “… there is something strange about the house — I can feel it.”

The narrator continues feeling spooked out by the place, and John again dismisses her fears. She wants to sleep in a different, prettier room, but her husband disagrees. He recommends a large room at the top of the house that used to be a nursery. The wallpaper freaks out the narrator, and she imagines a woman trapped within the paper “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out”. Even though she hates the wallpaper, the narrator is also strangely fascinated by it. Stuck in the room with orders to do nothing but rest, the narrator becomes more obsessed with the wallpaper and less trusting of her husband. She begins to sense a “yellow smell” in the room. By the end, the narrator is hopelessly insane, convinced that there are many creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaper. That she herself is the trapped woman. “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did.” When John breaks into the locked room and sees the full horror of the situation, he faints in the doorway, so that the narrator has “to creep over him every time!”. What’s up with the ending? i’m wondering if the narrator ever gets her sanity back. Does her husband regain consciousness? Does she get tired of creeping?This doesn’t seem like an ending all. i am guessing that the narrator is actually free at the end.