In Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the unnamed female protagonist is instructed to rest in isolation and stillness in the large upper room of a remote country house that has bars on the windows and an ugly faded wallpaper with some kind of design in the print that is never fully identified. The woman confides that she had selected another room that she thought would be better, but she was overruled by her husband. “I wanted one [room] downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.
He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.” The room she stays in is as confining as her marriage as she describes, “He [John] is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me.” However, because she has been cut off from nature and green growing things, she begins to identify with the lumpy shapes she sees in the wallpaper until she is completely crazy and unable to function in the human world. This story warns that we cannot live our lives separate from nature and must respect our connection to it.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Boston: Small & Maynard, 1899.