The Yellow Wallpaper Video

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman and published in 1892. The story follows an unnamed female narrator who becomes gradually obsessed with the wallpaper in the home where her husband has brought her to recover from hysteria. Inspired by Gilman’s own treatment for postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, the story makes exemplary use of its unreliable narrator, and is considered a classic of feminist literature.

The story opens on the narrator’s account of the mansion that her physician husband, John, has rented for the summer so she can recuperate from a nervous disorder. While the narrator does not believe that she is ill, John is convinced that she suffers from “neurasthenia” and has prescribed prolonged bed rest so that she may recover. Meanwhile, their nanny, Mary, will take care of their baby, and John's sister, Jennie, will help with the housekeeping.

The narrator is confined to the house’s former nursery, a spacious, sunlit room lined with yellow wallpaper, which the narrator notices is stripped off in two places. Although she detests the wallpaper, which is decorated in a hideous, frenzied pattern, her husband, John, refuses to change rooms, arguing that the nursery is best suited for her recovery. Still, the narrator is put off by the room’s strange details, like the bed, which is bolted to the floor, or the bars on the windows—all of which she attributes to the recklessness of the children who used to occupy it.

Two weeks later, the narrator’s condition has worsened. She feels a constant sense of anxiety and fatigue and can barely muster enough energy to write in the journal she keeps secret from John. The narrator's irritation with the wallpaper grows when she discovers a recurring pattern in it, as well as the faint image of a “skulking” figure stuck behind the pattern.

The more time passes, the more anxious and depressed the narrator becomes. The wallpaper becomes her obsession, and she spends most of her time studying its bewildering patterns. “There are things in that paper that no one knows but me,” she writes, “or ever will.” Soon, the image of the figure "creeping" behind the wallpaper becomes clearer. By moonlight, she can see it distinctly: a woman trapped behind bars.

Eventually, the narrator attempts to convince John to leave the house for a visit with relatives, but he refuses, and the narrator grows reluctant to confide in him about her discoveries in the room. Noting John and Jennie’s “queer” looks, she theorizes first that they too are being influenced by the wallpaper, which Jennie complains is leaving yellow marks on her and John’s clothing. Soon, the narrator becomes paranoid that John and Jennie are interested in the paper too, insisting that only she can uncover its secrets.

Surprisingly, the narrator's health begins to improve as her interest in the wallpaper deepens, and she soon comes to believe that the two are linked. While she suspects that Jennie and John are observing her, her only concern is that they might get in the way of her investigations into the wallpaper. Moreover, she begins to notice that the distinct "yellow smell" of the wallpaper has spread throughout the house, following her even when she goes for rides in their carriage.

At night, the narrator tells of a woman in the wallpaper shaking the bars in the pattern violently, trying to break free, but maintains that she has seen this woman creeping outside in the sunlight too. She grows convinced that the pattern includes several women who were strangled in the bars while trying to escape and vows to peel off the paper before she leaves the house in two days.

That night, the narrator attempts to free the woman in the wallpaper by peeling off the wallpaper on half of the room. In the morning, Jennie is shocked by the scene, but the narrator convinces her that she only stripped the wallpaper because she despises its design. Jennie understands, agreeing that the wallpaper is ugly, and does not tell John.

The next night, however, the narrator locks herself in her room and continues stripping the wallpaper, hearing shrieks as she tears it off. “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate,” she writes, even contemplating jumping out of a window. She writes of seeing several women creeping around outside and wonders “if they all [came] out of that wallpaper as I did?”

By morning, the narrator has peeled off all of the wallpaper and begun to creep around the perimeter of the room. John eventually breaks in, but the narrator doesn’t recognize him. “I’ve got out,” she cries. “And I’ve pulled back most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” John faints, and the narrator crawls over his inert body, exclaiming, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right by my path by the wall, so I had to creep over him every time.”