The Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator is telling the story in her perspective. She is describing exactly what she is going through with her marriage and she is also explaining exactly how she feels. The narrator of this story is a young woman who is suffering from anxiety and depression after giving birth to her child. She is married to her husband John and they have recently rented a summer home for a few weeks. “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!” (676). The narrator does not believe there is anything wrong with her but her husband, a physician, has diagnosed her with a slight hysterical tendency. Her husband has banned her from the outside world and has not allowed her to work until she gets better. She believes she would feel much better if she goes out and exercise from time to time. “Personally, I believe that congenital work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (677). The narrator of the story is confined to the upstairs nursery which has the awful yellow wallpaper. “The paint and paper look as if boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off- the paper- in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life” (678.) She is not able to write in her journal which she loves. She needs to hide it from her husband as he visits her room from time to time. The narrator does not seem to be very reliable. She seems like she is going through a tough stage while she is trapped in the upstairs bedroom. She begins to see a trapped woman figure behind the yellow wallpaper. “The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be. The narrator’s husband, John, locks her away in her room, so she can get some rest and therefore be cured from her illness. However, as she keeps staring at the yellow wallpaper, the room becomes like a