"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Summary

The story is told in the first person by a woman who is married to a man named John. Her husband on the other hand is a physician and does not believe in the supernatural. Also, she is sick and he doesn't believe her about that either. He thinks she should rest and not write even though she feels it would do her good. She feels he is loving but restricting.

They have rented a colonial mansion for the summer. The narrator is suspicious that there may be something supernatural about the mansion because they rented it so cheaply. There was legal trouble concerning heirs but she doesn't know more than that. The house and the grounds are beautiful although they have fallen into slight disrepair. The room she and John are staying in is in depressing shape, including grotesquely peeling yellowed wallpaper and the narrator is severely bothered by it.

John is away all day on physician duty. He remains blind to her suffering and insists the mansion is doing her good, as do the narrator's brother and John's sister. She appreciates their concern for her but thinks they are wrong. She has to hide her writing of this story from them. The narrator has a baby, who makes her nervous. A woman named Mary takes care of him.

The narrator has hallucinations and her husband dismisses these too. She sees things animated in the wall paper, in its tears and spots and knobs. Specifically, she sees " a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design". She is severely depressed and is doing her best to hide this too. Gradually she grows fond of the room in spite, maybe thanks to the wallpaper. She starts analyzing the wallpaper very intently, obsessively.

Her depression grows. She says again she hates the room, but then- " I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see." It seems she has post partum depression. She appeals to John directly but he is completely blind to her suffering.

The narrator now sees clearly a woman in the wallpaper. Meanwhile, she is starting to fear John. He and the housekeeper Jennie have begun behaving strangely and the narrator attributes it to the wallpaper. She has caught them both looking at the paper. Jennie remarks that the paper stains everything it touches. The narrator is now excited by the wallpaper, and cites it in the narrative as the source of her improvement. She does not share this attribution with John. The narrator tries to identify the smell of the wallpaper and settles on yellow for a description.

Now the narrator is sure there is a woman, or several, behind the wallpaper and that she is responsible for the wallpaper moving around. The women try to get through the wallpaper but the wallpaper strangles the women, "turns them upside down and makes their eyes white". She sees the woman creeping outside too through the window, but nobody else sees her because when a carriage comes she hides in the bushes. She sees the woman everywhere. The woman keeps her company.

The narrator begins to doubt her husband's good intentions for her. She thinks his personality was affected by the wallpaper.

On her last day at the mansion, the narrator peels the wallpaper off, to help release the woman. She lies to Jennie and says she did it "out of pure spite at the vicious thing". Jennie believes her. The room is bare and now she enjoys it. She locks herself in her room with a rope and throws the key out the window, with the intent to catch the woman if she escapes from the walls and tie her up for John to see. She tries to move the bed so she can reach higher up on the wall but the bed is nailed to its place. She considers jumping out the window "for exercise" but knows she shouldn't (just as she tried not to reveal other signs of madness). She wonders if all the creeping women she sees outside come from behind the wallpaper as she did.

John tries to go in but can't because the door is locked. He fetches the key and gets in, " "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"". The story ends with the narrator firmly in her alternate persona.