Step inside The Yellow Wallpaper

The film without the cuts. And the book itself.

She is told to rest, but the walls begin to speak.

9:41

The Cast

The narrator

Main

An unnamed woman writes in secret while the yellow nursery wall slowly becomes her only listener.

Locations

The rented colonial mansion

mansion

A long-empty country house behind locked gates, beautiful and neglected, where she has been placed to rest.

Passage

Trapped between her own certainty and her doctors' disbelief, she can only write in secret.

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The Author’s Pen

What Is One To Do

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.

Reading

The narrator can only be honest to a piece of paper. She calls her diary "dead paper," and that is exactly why she can finally admit what she cannot say to anyone alive: that her husband, the doctor treating her, refuses to believe she is actually ill. Everyone with authority over her, her husband and her brother, are physicians who agree she has nothing worse than nerves. She twice asks "what is one to do?" because she genuinely has no answer. She thinks work would help her, but the very act of writing this down has to be done in secret and wears her out.

World Index

The Plot

The Rest CureWriting in SecretThe Worst PaperThe Figure Behind the PatternThe Creeping WomanI Have Got Out at Last

The Cast

The narratorJohnThe woman in the wallpaperJennieThe babyMaryThe narrator's brotherWeir MitchellMother and NellieThe childrenThe many creeping womenCousin Henry and Julia

Locations

The final locked roomThe garden and grape arborsThe rented colonial mansionThe shaded lane and roadThe upstairs nurseryThe windows

Objects of Note

The barred windowsThe hidden journal / dead paperThe key under the plantain leafThe nailed-down bedThe prescription / treatment scheduleThe ropeThe torn wallpaperThe yellow wallpaperYellow stains / smooches

Core Concepts

Care becomes confinement when it refuses to listenDomestic space becomes a prison while still looking like a homeEnforced rest harms the mind by forbidding its workOne trapped woman widens into many womenPrivate writing preserves what public speech cannotRational authority becomes dangerous when it cannot hear sufferingThe pattern becomes readable because ordinary explanations fail

The Author's Pen

A Schedule for Each HourThe Worst PaperThe Worst PaperA Burden AlreadyWriting When She Is OutThe Figure BehindThe Woman Behind BarsThe Woman BehindThe Creeping WomanPeeling Off the PaperLocked In Awaiting JohnI’ve Got Out At LastSomething Queer About ItJohn Would Not Hear Of ItThreat of Weir MitchellI Am a Doctor DearWaiting to Find ItThe Smell of the WallpaperWatching the Paper

Plot point 01

The Rest Cure

Brought to a country house for a "rest cure," the narrator is forbidden work or writing by her physician husband and shut in an upstairs room.

Objects of Note

The yellow wallpaper

A sickly yellow paper crawls across the walls until a woman seems trapped behind its pattern.

The Cast

John

Main · household / medical authority

A careful husband-doctor stands at the locked door, unable to master the room he controlled.

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The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.

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