The Yellow
Wall Paper
by
Charlotte Perkins Gillman
Characters - 1
Narrator - A young upper class
mother, now undergoing care
for depression. Highly imaginative,
her doctors believe she has a “slight
hysterical tendency” and that writing
will excite her too much.
Characters - 2
John - The narrator’s husband.
John restricts her behavior as part
of her treatment. He seems to love
his wife, but he does not understand
the negative effect his treatment has
on her.
Characters - 3
John’s sister acts as housekeeper for
the couple. Her presence and her
contentment with a domestic role
intensify the narrator’s feelings of
guilt over her own inability to act as
a traditional wife and mother.
Characters - 4
Mary - takes care of the narrator and
John's baby. Her name is a possible
allusion to the Virgin Mary. Mary
Characters - 1
seems to the perfect mother to the
narrator, intensifying her feeling of
inadequacy.
SETTING (TIME) · Late 19th century
(a time period when women were
oppressed, with few rights in society.)
(PLACE) A rented country home,
England
TONE · The narrator is in a state of
anxiety for much of the story, with
flashes of sarcasm, anger and
desperation.
TENSE present tense
Summary
• The narrator, an unnamed woman, has recently had a child (and in modern
terms is suffering from post-partum depression). Upon retreating to a mansion
to vacation for the summer her husband, John, thinks it best to confine her to an
upstairs room for her mental well-being.
• She begins to believe that another woman is behind the wallpaper, attempting to
break free. The narrator begins to tear down pieces of the yellow wallpaper to
rescue this trapped woman.
• The summer draws to an end. The narrator has locked herself in and is tearing
the last of the wallpaper off the wall. John finds the key and enters the room to
find his wife creeping around strangely.
• He faints as she exclaims, "I've got out at last...And I've pulled off most of the
paper, so you can't put me back!" The narrator, continues to creep her path
around the room stepping over her incapacitated husband as if he wasn't even
there.
Gilman uses literary techniques
such as metaphors and similes
to make comparisons that link
two unrelated ideas.
“the pattern lolls like a broken neck…”
“Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that
congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good…”
The repetition of ‘personally’ shows us how strongly the woman
feels about her ‘loving’ imprisonment.
Narration – 1st person
The protagonist’s own words and the quotes, dashes, parentheses
and incomplete sentences make it feel like her personal thoughts.
This helps the reader to enter into the lonely and misunderstood
universe in which the main characters is living.
• Mental Illness
• Relationship between husband
and wife (misguided ‘love’)
• Oppression
• Freedom of self expression
Conflict
Person vs Self
Person vs Society
Genre
Gothic or Psychological Fiction