The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is a woman quite typical of her time and class in the late 1800’s.  She shows symptoms of a “temporary nervous depression”, (what Freud might have called hysteria), and her husband,a physician, has prescribed a “rest cure”.  They rent an old colonial mansion for the summer and move into the upstairs nursery, which is has been decorated with patterned yellow wallpaper that is strangely torn. The room’s numerous windows, which are barred, furnish the requisite fresh air. She is forbidden from working, and so spends many hours staring at the wallpaper, which becomes increasingly intriguing and begins to mutate.  The story is told as a series of journal entries that chronicle her gradual descent into madness.Gilman wrote the story after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. First published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine, it is regarded as a seminal work of American feminist literature.

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