The Yellow Wall-Paper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. A young mother, confined to a room for a rest cure by her physician husband, becomes obsessed with the pattern of its yellow wallpaper. It is now a classic of American literature and of feminist writing.
The story
The narrator writes a secret journal. Her husband John has forbidden her to work or to write, and has chosen for her an old nursery at the top of a rented house.
Day after day she studies the ugly yellow wallpaper, and comes to see a woman trapped behind its pattern, trying to get out.
A criticism of medicine
The story attacks the rest cure prescribed at the time for women suffering from nervous illness, which consisted of complete inactivity.
Gilman had undergone this treatment herself and said it had brought her close to madness.
A rediscovery
The story was little noticed at first, and some readers took it simply as a tale of horror.
Reissued in 1973 by the Feminist Press, it became one of the most studied short stories in the United States.
Anecdotes
A refusal
The editor of The Atlantic Monthly rejected the story, saying he could not forgive himself if he made others as miserable as he had been made by reading it.
Why she wrote it
In 1913 Gilman published a short article explaining that she had written the story not to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the narrator?
A young mother undergoing a rest cure.
Who is John?
Her husband, a physician.
When was the story published?
In January 1892.