[Brianna Lewis]

In “The Yel­low Wall­pa­per” by Char­lotte Perkins Gilman, the nar­ra­tor leads into a dis­cus­sion about her ill­ness. She is suf­fer­ing from “ner­vous de­pres­sion” and deal­ing with her hus­band, who be­lit­tles her ill­ness and her thoughts. Her hus­band John, whose also her doc­tor gives her a treat­ment that re­quires her to do noth­ing, no work­ing or writ­ing which she en­joys. She be­lieves that stay­ing ac­tive and hav­ing free­dom would help with her con­di­tion, she be­gins to se­cretly write in a jour­nal in order to ex­press her feel­ings.

As the book goes on, the nar­ra­tor con­tin­ues to com­plain that her hus­band doesn’t lis­ten to her wor­ries and treats her like a child. She also sus­pects that there is some­thing strange and mys­te­ri­ous about the house, but John says her con­cerns are just a “silly fan­tasy”. The cou­ple moves into a room at the top of the house, with barred win­dows and a peel­ing yel­low wall­pa­per. This yel­low wall­pa­per be­comes a major force in the story, as the nar­ra­tor is con­vinced that the wall­pa­per con­tains some­thing that threat­ens the whole house. The nar­ra­tor de­scribes her progress in un­cov­er­ing the “se­crets” of the pat­tern, as she is con­vinced that she is the woman who was trapped be­hind the wall­pa­per.