Summary: The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper An ill woman with a husband who contains her and a decoration that haunts her. A depressed woman is married to a Doctor who says that she is not truly sick. Her husband takes her to a rental house for a few months to help her rest. The bedroom that they stay in has one specific decoration that the woman does not like, yellow wallpaper. The woman despises the yellow paper on the wall. She sits and watches the wallpaper for days, particularly at night while her husband sleeps. She decides that there is a woman behind the wallpaper who is caged in and trying to get out. The lady behind the paper creeps around the house, the garden, and behind the paper. The last day they stay at the rental the woman tears down the wallpaper. She is determined to get the lady out behind the paper. She locks herself in the room, throws the key out the window and rips down all of the paper. Her husband finally gets himself into the room and is terrified at the sight that he sees. The woman says, “I’ve got out at last” (Gilman 403).
If John was not her husband and a doctor she may not have continued to listen to him as well as obey him about her condition. Also the decoration in their bedroom needed to be something that would be hard for the woman to tear down as well as something that circled the room and repeated a specific pattern. One of the only things that can do that would be wallpaper. Another event that would be considered as constituent would be when they said the lady behind the paper was “creeping.” When the woman finally tears down the paper in the bedroom the author says she must “creep” over her husband to tear down the rest. That line signifies the lady behind the wallpaper was the woman all