The Yellow Wallpaper

 The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is about the twisted sense of being a prisoner in your own mind or in a relationship. The narrative of this story is first person told by ‘the wife’ of  John who is her husband and a doctor (physician). The short piece is about how this couple rents an ancestral place for the summer, or three months; and their bedroom is the main topic because of the ugly yellow wallpaper. The wife sees all different aspects and creations in this ugly wallpaper which then coincide with her own emotions and feelings about herself and her husband. She keeps asking John to change the room and the wallpaper, but he never does because he sees no sense in changing something when they are going to be leaving this place in a short time.

John, her husband being a doctor becomes a main role in the wife and her emotional feelings and imaginative creations of the wallpaper. John keeps telling his wife that she is not sick even though she insists everyday she is, and that she is getting worse slowly everyday. He doesn't treat her as he would any other patient because he can't deal with the thought or idea that his wife could be on the same level as the patients he sees everyday. John then deals with the disillusion by feeding his wife unwanted by her, tonics, herbs, and other like vitamins daily so that makes him believe she's ok; because she is taking all this ‘stuff’ that is healthy for her. The wife ends up not being able to sleep and every night just stares at this wallpaper and watches as the wife says “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.” and other times she describes it as fungus or mutations all being dirty and negative like her feelings about her relationship and herself since she is not well. The story ends with the wife eventually tearing down the wallpaper and trying to transform the room and locking herself in there so she can not be stopped by her controlling husband.