The Nexus Archive
Social Criticism and Fiction · Novel
The Yellow Wallpaper
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman · The Critic of the Sickroom · Progressive Era America, 1860-1935
Gilman's complete short story of confinement, medical authority, forbidden writing, and psychological horror.
- Intermediate
- 1892
- ~30 min read
- 1 chapter guide
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the The Yellow Wallpaper guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
Editor's Prelude
The Rest She Did Not Choose
Charlotte Perkins Gilman had been told to stop writing as part of her treatment for a severe nervous illness. In 1887, a specialist prescribed bed rest, limited her intellectual activity, and advised her never to write or draw again. Gilman later said that returning to work helped her recover. Published in 1892, this story begins with a woman under the care of her husband, John, who is also a physician. He is certain that rest will make her well.
The couple have rented a country house for the summer. Their baby is in someone else's care, and John has arranged his wife's days and forbidden her to work. She believes writing might help, so she keeps a private account whenever no one is watching. On those pages she can say what John dismisses: that she is still suffering, that the upstairs room he chose disturbs her, and that she wants a different kind of help.
The opening pages
The Yellow Wallpaper
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see, he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.
Read it in a Quest
Read Gilman, Cooper, and Mill as they expose how private rooms, education, law, race, and economic dependence shape freedom.
Chapter guides · 1
The Yellow Wallpaper
Out from Behind the Pattern
Escape and collapse arrive in the same terrible motion.
What just happened
As the summer ends, the narrator sees the woman from the wallpaper creeping outside by day and admits that she too creeps when she is alone. On the final night, she tears at the paper, believing she is helping the woman behind it. The next day she locks herself in, throws the key outside, secures herself with a rope, and keeps circling the room. When John enters, she says she has got out in spite of him and Jane. He faints across her path, and she continues to creep over him.
Why it matters
Her hidden writing began as a way to describe suffering that John and her brother dismissed. By the end she can speak without John correcting her, but she has locked herself inside the room and tied herself there. His collapse reverses their positions while she continues circling the wall.
Carry forward
John's sister is Jennie; the narrator's final declaration names Jane. Earlier, the narrator wondered who had worn the long streak around the wall. Now her shoulder fits it as she circles John. Her claim to be out ends in the same room.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Yellow Wallpaper?
- About 30 min in total.
- How difficult is The Yellow Wallpaper?
- Intermediate. A short novel; about 30 minutes of reading.
- Which edition is this?
- The original English text, first published in 1892. The text follows The Yellow Wallpaper, Project Gutenberg #1952 standalone transcription.
- Can I read The Yellow Wallpaper for free?
- The Yellow Wallpaper is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription, and completing an earlier Quest's Mastery. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- One chapter guide, written by the Nexus editors; it opens in full here.
About Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American writer, lecturer, and social critic whose fiction and essays examined women's work, domestic life, mental health, and economic dependence.
“What happens when care becomes control?”
Gilman gives Nexus a compact but intense bridge between fiction, gender, medicine, labor, and the social structures hidden inside private life.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Yellow Wallpaper is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.