Charlotte Perkins Gilman 
The Yellow Wallpaper 

The Yellow Wallpaper (original title: ‘The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story’) is a short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women’s health, both physical and mental. Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the unnamed woman is forbidden from working, and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a ‘temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency’. The story depicts the effect of understimulation on the narrator’s mental health and her descent into psychosis.