The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Summary | Neb English Support Class 12

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The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Summary | Neb English Support Class 12


The Yellow Wallpaper


ABOUT THE STORY

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story that has been written by an American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The original title of this story is "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story." It was first published in The New England Magazine in January 1892. This is quite significant story in early American feminist literature. It has presented how people viewed women's mental and physical health in the 19th century. This story is about an unnamed woman who writes in her  journal during her vacation with her husband in a large house after giving birth. She's suffering from postpartum hysteria and secretly questions if her husband is the main reason for her lack of improvement. The story is also appreciated as a great horror fiction piece. It explores themes of self-expression, miscommunication and misunderstanding.


FULL PLOT SUMMARY

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" starts with an unnamed narrator. She is writing in a journal, amazed by the beautiful house and grounds her husband has taken her to for the summer. She senses "something queer" about the place and mentions being there because of her "nervous depression." The narrator is not very happy about her husband. She claims that her husband, who is also her doctor, doesn't take her illness or her opinions seriously. Her treatment, called the "rest cure," forces her to avoid almost all forms of activity, including work and writing. Even though she's supposed to follow these instructions, she believes that doing things, having freedom, and engaging herself in interesting tasks would make her feel better. So, she's secretly writing a journal to "relieve her mind." In her journal, she talks about the lovely but neglected house and gardens. These are impacted by the estate’s years of emptiness. Upstairs in the nursery, she finds the yellow wallpaper. She's completely bothered by this yellow wallpaper because it is quite strange with its shapeless pattern.

In the first few weeks of summer, the narrator manages to hide her journal, so John doesn't know her real thoughts. Despite wanting more interesting company and disliking John's bossy type of behaviour, she takes more interest in the strange and somewhat threatening wallpaper. John is very concerned about her focus on it and won't change the wallpaper to avoid giving in to her anxiety. The imagination of the narrator is now active, and she thinks about her tendency to have had a very active mind in the past. She talks about the bedroom once again, thinking it used to be a nursery for young children because the wallpaper is torn, the floor has scratches, and the furniture is big and heavy and doesn't move. While examining the wallpaper, she notices a strange hidden pattern. Just as she starts to understand it, John's sister, Jennie, who takes care of both the house and the narrator, interrupts her writing. 

After the Fourth of July, she reports that her family has just visited her, and the narrator feels very exhausted. John warns that he might send her to a doctor, Weir Mitchell, the real-life physician under whom Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author, actually suffered. The narrator is alone most of the time, often by herself, and oddly, she starts to like the wallpaper. Studying its pattern becomes her main way of having entertainment. As she becomes more obsessed, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes much clearer. She sees a hidden pattern that looks like a woman crouching and moving behind the main design, resembling cage bars in the dark. The wallpaper starts taking over the narrator's imagination. John mistakenly thinks her obsession means she's calm and getting better. However, she sleeps less and thinks that she can smell the wallpaper everywhere. Now, the hidden pattern looks like a woman trying to escape from behind the main pattern. The narrator sees the woman shaking the bars at night and moving around during the day when she is free from the wall. 

Thinking that John and Jennie are aware of her obsession, she decides to get rid of the wallpaper completely, peeling off much of it at night. The next day, when she is alone, she goes into a sort of frenzy, biting and tearing at the paper to release the woman she believes is trapped inside the pattern. At the end, the narrator is completely crazy, thinking there are many women moving around. She also believes that she has emerged from the wallpaper. She keeps crawling nonstop around the room, messing up the wallpaper. When John finally breaks into the locked room and sees how bad things are, he faints at the doorway, so that the narrator has “to creep over him every time!”


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