The Yellow Wallpaper (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- First Published: 1892
- Type of Work: Novella
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The late nineteenth century
- Setting: New England
- Principal Characters: The narrator, John, Jennie, Weir Mitchell
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Social realism, Short fiction, Women’s literature
- Subjects: Husbands, United States or Americans, Wives, Power, personal or social, Sexism, Gender roles, Psychology or psychologists, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Doctors, New England, Mental illness, Reality, Feminism, Women’s issues, Oppression, Women, Imagination, Depression, mental
- Locales: East (U.S.), New England
Form and Content
The structure of The Yellow Wallpaper creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy. The story is written in a journal-style, first-person narrative which includes nine short entries, each entry indicated by a small space between it and the last. The journal entries span three months during which John attempts to cure his wife’s “nervous condition” through the rest cure of Weir Mitchell, which assumes that intellectual stimulation damages a woman physically and psychologically. In the beginning of the story, the narrator appears sane and believable,...
[The entire page is 2137 words long]
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