Recent illustration for "The Yellow Wallpaper" by the artist Yesserina.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" (originally published as "The Yellow Wall-paper: A Story") is a short story by the American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It first appeared in print in The New England Magazine in January 1892. The story describes a woman's descent into madness. It is semi-autobiographical, having been written shortly after its author was treated for postpartum psychosis.
The story's protagonist and narrator is an unnamed woman whose husband, a doctor named John, makes her spend the summer in the country for her health. The woman, her baby, John, John's sister and some servants stay in a large rented house. John chooses a bedroom for himself and his wife which is large and airy but otherwise quite unpleasant. The narrator takes an immediate dislike to the room's yellow wallpaper. She soon starts to see grotesque images in its pattern. After some time, the narrator becomes convinced that the wallpaper depicts a woman trapped behind a cage,
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is considered an important work of early American feminist literature. It is not hard to see criticism of the treatment of women in the male-dominated society of 19th century America in the tale. The story's protagonist is confined to the house. She has to write in secret because she has been forbidden to do work of any kind. John, in his capacity as both a husband and a representative of the medical profession, is dismissive of her problems. John's treatment of his wife and patient means that her physical and mental health only get worse.
It is also possible to read "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a simple horror story or even a ghost story, one in which the narrator slowly becomes possessed by the spirit of a mad woman who had previously been confined in the same house.
There have been numerous adaptations of the story to other media.
Plot[]
"The Yellow Wallpaper" takes the form of a journal which is written in secret by an unnamed woman. Both the woman's brother and her husband John are highly respected doctors. The woman believes that she is seriously ill, although her brother and John insist that she is not. Nevertheless, for the good of his wife's health, John insists that they and their baby spend the summer in the country. They rent a large English-style country house for three months.
First page of a 1901 edition of "The Yellow Wallpaper".
Against his wife's wishes, John chooses an upper story bedroom for the two of them. The room is a very large one, occupying almost an entire floor, with several windows that let in air and sunshine. The narrator thinks that the room was used first as a nursery, then as a playroom and finally as a gym. There are bars on the windows and rings hanging on the walls. All of the furniture in the room had to be brought in from elsewhere in the house. When the narrator and John arrived, the only furniture in the room was a bed which had been nailed to the floor. The narrator observes that the children who once played in the room treated it very roughly. The bedstead is badly damaged and so is the floor. The wallpaper has been torn from the wall in places and some of the plaster on the wall has been dug into also.[1]
The narrator is not surprised that the children who once played in the room tried to remove the wallpaper because she takes an instant dislike to it. She describes it as being an "unclean yellow' color. It is mostly faded by the sun but it is a "dull yet lurid orange" color in places. There is a "sprawling flamboyant" pattern on the paper. The strips of wallpaper appear to have been put up haphazardly, meaning that there is no symmetry or order of any kind in its pattern. This bothers the narrator. John offers to change the wallpaper, then changes his mind. He says that putting up new wallpaper would be giving way to the "fancies" of a "nervous patient". He adds that if he did change the wallpaper, his wife would then complain of other things, such as the bars on the windows.
John is often away in the daytime, leaving his wife in the care of his sister Jennie. The narrator begins to become quite fond of her bedroom. She enjoys looking out of the window at the gardens. She thinks that she can see people walking about the gardens. John says that she is imagining that and she should try not to do so.
Part of the wallpaper begins to look to the narrator like someone with a broken neck and bulging eyes. She can see a line of eyes in another part of the wallpaper. She begins to feel that there are two patterns on the wallpaper and that there is a figure behind the pattern on top.
Jennie handles all the housework but the narrator feels tired all the time. She cries a lot, although she is careful not to do so when John is at home. John says that if her health does not improve by the fall, he will send her to see Dr. Weir Mitchell. The narrator says that she does not want to see that doctor because she has a friend who was not well treated by him[2]
The figure which the narrator can see in the wallpaper takes on the form of a stooping, crawling woman. She then only becomes able to see the woman at night. In the daytime, she sees a pattern of toadstools in the wallpaper. At night, she sees the woman shaking the pattern, which forms a cage for her, as if she is trying to escape.
The narrator believes that the wallpaper is also having an effect on John and Jennie. She sees Jennie touching the wallpaper. When the narrator asks her about this, Jennie appears surprised and guilty and says that the wallpaper is leaving yellow stains on the clothes of both the narrator and John.
A week before the narrator is due to leave the house, the weather turns wet and foggy and it is necessary to close the bedroom windows. It is then that the narrator first begins to notice the smell of the wallpaper. The smell is not necessarily an unpleasant one but the narrator feels that it lingers and clings to her. She feels that it spreads all over the house and even into the gardens. She even thinks about burning down the house in order to get rid of the smell.
Illustration from a 1901 edition of "The Yellow Wallpaper". The Latin text means "I know it must be".
The narrator notices a mark which goes all around the bottom of the wall, except for behind the bed. She becomes certain that the pattern on the wallpaper has moved as result of the woman behind it shaking it at night. She is uncertain if there are several women behind the wallpaper or one who moves very quickly. She thinks that the faces with bulging eyes that she can see in the wallpaper's pattern are those of people who tried to escape from behind the wallpaper and got suffocated by the bars of their cage in the process.
The narrator comes to believe that the woman gets out from behind the wallpaper during the daytime. She believes that she sees her crawling around the garden and hiding when she sees anyone coming. The narrator is not surprised by this because she also crawls around in secret behind a locked door.
Two nights before she is due to leave the house, while John is away all night, the narrator determines to free the caged woman. She tries to peel all the wallpaper off the wall. By the morning, she has removed most of it. Jennie is not surprised when she sees this because she hated the wallpaper too.
In preparation for the imminent departure of the narrator and John, all of the furniture is taken out of the bedroom again. Jennie and all the servants leave the house, leaving the narrator alone. She locks the house's front door and hides its key. She continues the work of peeling all of the wallpaper off the wall. She is determined to free the caged woman, although she is also afraid of her and the other women that she can see crawling around in the garden. She has a rope with which to bind the woman if necessary.
Having suddenly come to believe that she is the woman who was trapped behind the wallpaper, the narrator says that she does not want to leave the room. She says that she is happy crawling along the mark on the bottom of the wall. She hears John knocking on the front door. She does not open the door but tells John where he can find the key. John comes into the bedroom and sees the narrator crawling around the room. She tells him that she has escaped and that he cannot put her back because she has peeled most of the wallpaper off the wall.
Adaptations[]
American short film adaptations of "The Yellow Wallpaper" were released in 1977, 2011, 2012 and 2013. British short film adaptations were released in 2011 and 2014. Canadian short film adaptations were released in 2012 and 2015. A Swiss short film adaptation was released in 2006.
The 2012 American feature-length movie The Yellow Wallpaper, directed by Logan Thomas and starring Juliet Landau and Aric Cushing, is inspired by the short story rather than being a straight adaptation of it. The film also draws on material from several other stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
A TV movie based on "The Yellow Wallpaper" was made by the BBC. It stars Julia Watson as the female protagonist (who is given the name Charlotte) and Stephen Dillane as John. The film was first shown in the United States as an episode of Masterpiece Theater on PBS on December 17, 1989. It was first shown on British television on January 2, 1992.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" has twice been adapted as episodes of the American radio series Suspense. The first adaptation first aired on CBS on July 29, 1948. The second one first aired on CBS on June 30, 1957. Both episodes star Agnes Moorehead. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was adapted as an episode of the British radio series Fear on Four. The episode, which stars Anna Massey, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on December 27, 1990. An episode of the American radio series Radio Tales based on "The Yellow Wallpaper" first aired on NPR on December 10, 1996. Winnifred Phillips won a Gracie Award for Best Actress in a National Network Drama for her performance in the episode.
There have been numerous stage adaptations of "The Yellow Wallpaper". Most plays based on the story have taken the form of one-woman-shows.
See also[]
- Sound files of public domain audiobooks of "The Yellow Wallpaper" from LibriVox:
- "The Diary of Mr. Poynter"
Footnotes[]
- ↑ Another explanation for the state of the room, one not referred to by the narrator, is that an insane person was once confined there.
- ↑ Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) was an eminent American physician. He attempted, ineffectively, to cure Charlotte Perkins Gilman of depression by recommending that she had plenty of bed rest.