A woman, having recently borne a child, is depressed and anxious. Her husband, a doctor, decides she needs absolute rest, so arranges for them to spend the summer at a colonial mansion. Thus begins a short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and published in 1892 in New England Magazine.

Leaving most of the house unused, the two settle in an upstairs bedroom. The husband, John, is gone much of each day, leaving his wife alone. Their new baby is cared for downstairs by a maid.

In the late 1800s, women who experienced depression or nervous conditions of any sort were often prescribed a period of acute inactivity – usually lasting six to eight weeks – with no social or intellectual stimulus allowed. This was called a “rest cure” and was imposed on them by male doctors who thought it a suitable treatment for female emotional complaints. Gilman, herself, had experienced such a treatment, and uses a rest cure as the setting for her chilling tale.

The Yellow Wallpaper is told in the first person, in the form of journal entries. The woman (she is never named) wonders at the beginning if the mansion they have leased for the summer might be haunted.

“. . . there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?”

In another entry, she writes, “There is something strange about the house — I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window.”

In her journal, which she keeps secret, the woman says of her husband, “He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.”

She knows her husband worries about her imagination, that perhaps it’s the reason she isn’t getting well faster. But there is something wrong with the house, she is sure of it.

The large bedroom she and her husband share was once a nursery. It has bars on the window, and the bed is heavy, too heavy to be moved.

The woman is disturbed by the faded, peeling wallpaper. She asked her husband to have it changed, but he refuses. Why go to such an expense when they will only be there three months?

Little by little, the wallpaper gets the better of her. As it does, the gooseflesh factor in the story rises.  She sees movement behind the paper, in places where it is torn away, and becomes convinced there is a person trapped behind it. If somehow all that horrid yellow paper could be stripped away, the imprisoned being could get out.

I’d be doing Gilman a disservice if I said anything more. The Yellow Wallpaper can be found in the book, The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader. It can also be read for free on the Internet.

Read it during the day.

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