The Yellow Wallpaper

Summary

A woman is suffering from nervous depression, and her physician husband, John, rents a house. The woman stays in a room upstairs that has the yellow wallpaper. She stays awake at night watching the wallpaper, and sleeps during the day. She starts to see things in the wallpaper that are not there. She is consumed by her hobby of staring. To her husband's eye, she appears to improve in condition, but she deteriorates into a state where she sees a woman in the wallpaper. She sees this imaginary woman struggle and creep, and she mimics her. She rips the wallpaper off of the walls, and locks herself in the room.

Comment

The theme of the story is mental distress, and the comfort of being consumed by a world of illusion. It is so comfortable, in fact, that the narrator chooses to live in her imaginary world. Her hardships are completely manufactured by her own mind. She takes cod liver oil, tonics, and walks to placate her husband, while she is wholly obsessed with finding some hidden meaning in rotting wallpaper.