The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Examples

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Literary Fiction, Gothic or Horror Fiction

"The Yellow Wallpaper" was first published in January 1892 in New England Magazine.

United States, California

Narrated in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the unnamed woman from working or writing and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time.

The Subordination of Women in Marriage, The Importance of Self-Expression, The Evils of the “Resting Cure”

The Woman in the Wallpaper, John, Mary, Narrator, Jennie