This horrific classic is held up as one of the best short stories ever written for good reason. It's my idea of a perfectly creepy tale. Its unsettled writing, its slow build, its descriptions of the wallpaper itself, all lead to a very satisfying and sympathetic experience as a reader.
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I first read The Yellow Wallpaper when Covid struck back in 2020 – a perfect time for a tale about someone being cooked up and things not being right! It might sound strange, but I swear I haven't been able to look at a wall without my brain trying to see beyond it ever since.
The tale stuck with me so much that I penned my own version of it, The Swirly People, which was my first big short story sale. So it means a lot to me as a reader and a writer, and returning to it has been a pleasure.
*major spoilers from here onwards* - read the tale first if you want the full experience.
About
Our female narrator, unnamed, is taken to a big house away from the world as she undergoes the notorious rest cure at the behest of her doctor husband in order to get better. It does not end well.
There's been a lot written of this type of 'cure' that was prescribed during the late-nineteenth century and how damaging staring at the walls until you somehow magically felt better was to the psyche. Along with Gilman, Virgina Woolf and Edith Wharton also went through similar experiences.
During her restful incarceration, we're subject to our main character's (MC) internal thoughts as she hides her writing from her husband, John. It's unsettling for us as readers to watch this demise. She starts seeing things inside the hideous wallpaper of the room she's confined to. And then she becomes the thing she sees in the wallpaper, setting it (and herself) free from the constraints she's been placed in (at the cost of her sanity).
It's as good of a descent-into-madness tale I've read. The tale is so effective as it contains Gilman's own thoughts and experiences. She wrote this story to speak out about how awful it was.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
This is what writing teachers mean when they say write what you know – what they really mean is write what hurts. When reading it, those personal experiences really shine through and give the tale that extra kick.
I wish I could get well faster.
Dearest John
You see he does not believe I am sick!
The level of her mental or nervous breakdown before the tale starts isn't fully spoken of, so we wonder if she was really all that bad to warrant this treatment. She seems to have all her mental faculties in the beginning and is just going along with it all to please her husband.
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?
We feel her helplessness right off the bat. In fact, the sentiment what can one do? is echoed three times in just the first fifteen paragraphs. It's almost a direct plea for help in a very understated manner.
The fact that she's unnamed speaks even more to the story's central themes of women not having any voice or any choice when it came to their mental health. John himself doesn't call her by her name, calling her dear and little girl.
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage.
To him, MC is simply being a hysterical woman that needs to be put in the rest cure so she will return to herself. What makes it doubly difficult for MC to speak out is the fact that John is doctor and husband, the one prescribing the rest cure and the one making her feel bad for making such a fuss. We feel this oppression and we long for her to speak up.
John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious!
This is where the tale's tension is born and what makes this story so effective. We want her to shout at her scummy husband (just what is John up to on those trips anyway?). We want her to break free of this and rebel somewhat. And when she isn't able to do that, we see her slip further and further into madness. She's almost left with no choice but to do so, to conform.
And so, John's cure becomes the cause of her complete and brutal breakdown, which is what Gilman wanted to show when writing this tale after her own rest cure experience. If MC lived in a society where she could speak up and speak out, this never would've happened. She would've been empowered to fight for herself.
John represents the attitude of the times and how the whole system is set up for women to fail. This is all the more heartbreaking to read as MC is not being unreasonable. She's going along with it all, submissive, thinking that dear John knows best.
"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall be as sick as she pleases!"
So, when she is transformed at the end of the tale and she asks why her dearest John has fainted at the sight of her, we almost feel he deserves it.
John does not know how much I really suffer.
The offbeat writing
This story stands as a lesson in ignoring writing rules. If the story commands it, you can write however you want. If I were to write a story with this many exclamation marks, an editor would have a fit and laugh at me. There are 89 exclamation marks within the 6,300 words.
One of the versions of the story I have also has emphasised words in caps. Both of these things are not right (typically), but this serves to jolt the reader, unsettling them just that little bit more.
I've caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER!
I also find the use of paragraph breaks very interesting. The closer we get to the end, the paragraphs shorten, causing the reader to race through it.
Whether this was all intentional or planned, it serves the story well.
(Note - the version with the capitalised emphasis wasn't the version I shared with this group).
That wallpaper, though
At the start, we are introduced to the characters, the house, the situation. We feel her oppression like an immovable weight on our own hearts. When she first gets to the bedroom where she'll be spending most of her time, Gilman hits us with six paragraphs worth of MC describing the wallpaper.
I never saw a worse paper in my life… When you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
The word suicide is curious here. Why not say cut off, or break or something along those lines? Instead, she goes straight to suicide on her first 'meeting' with the wallpaper. Despite her calm, servient manner, is her true self contemplating this?
Each time MC describes the wallpaper, it seems to shift and change, becoming more ominous as slow time ticks on. In fact, it is this slowness we feel creeping into our bones as Gilman takes her time with the descriptions of the yellow wallpaper. What else can MC do? She has nothing but time. Nothing to do but stare at the walls. And so, each description of the wallpaper is different and explained in detail.
Here are a few of my spine-tingling favourites:
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
In the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so – I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.
I lie here on this great immovable bed – it is nail down, I believe – and follow that pattern about by the hour.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!
We watch MC get more and more frantic, seeing moving images, then a woman beyond the wallpaper trapped behind bars.
As we move through the tale, we begin to ask – Is it herself she's seeing here? Is this a projection?
The woman beyond the paper needs freed. MC also needs freed. They can help each other. MC never seems scared of what she sees. In the end, she welcomes it. She rips the paper off and becomes the thing behind the paper. You can see the mirrored image when the act is committed in how it is written:
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.
She has met her demise. She has become madness, the very thing this treatment was supposed to stop.
How we treat our ill
It's a very noble story. Gilman wrote this to raise awareness of her terrible experiences. And it's not a problem we've fixed all this time later.
I'm going to stop here (even though I could go on about the house and creeping by daylight and her relationship (or lack thereof) with her child (which mirrors the fact she gave away custody or her own child)).
And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so.
What were your thoughts? Do you have any suggestions for what we could read next as a group?
Wow! Great rundown, I felt like I was rereading the story and I loved your attention to detail. <also> Is it just me? From the very beginning of the story, I had the uneasy feeling that her husband was gaslighting her, either psychologically or with drugs (he was a doctor), to make her ill so he could go on his nefarious trips. Maybe I’m just too boilerplate?
James Freeman
(…be curious to read your story)
I have never read, or even heard of, this story. Thank you for bringing it to the group. I didn't know what year it was written until after I had read it, and I was surprised to find it was first published in 1892.
I agree with your synopsis—it was a slow burn into a mental breakdown and very accurately portrayed. The use of exclamation points and capitalization I usually chalk up to the custom of the time when reading an old story like this one. (However, 89 is quite a bit!!!!)
Not only does this story show the horrific decline of a woman’s mental health, but also depicts the odd way women in general were medically treated in that time period, whether purposefully or not.
I liked the imagery of the wallpaper, initially just a sickly yellow color, followed by shapes moving about, and then a person appears, finally a transference of the MC to the wall where she ultimately rips it all off. After all, wallpaper is only a facade. Rip off anybody’s facade and you find their true self. Sadly, the MC’s true self had lost track of reality.
Good story. Thanks.