there are rings and things in the walls." These details suggest a prison just as much as a nursery or a gymnasium, and it quickly becomes clear that the narrator's husband has shut her up in what is essentially a large but dilapidated cell. The narrator describes her husband as well intentioned, but she is insane by the end of the story and unreliable from the very beginning.

Apart from being a prison, the room is in a state of disrepair. The wallpaper, quite apart from its bilious color, is grimy and a faded. Patches of it have been stripped off the walls, though it is not quite clear whether the narrator did this herself. She ends her description of the wallpaper by remarking:

No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

This is a curious remark, given that she is shut up in the room for an indefinite amount of time with no end in sight. There is nothing conditional about her imprisonment. Although the narrator initially tries to make the best of the room, she finds it thoroughly unpleasant and oppressive and soon complains about it to her husband—who, as usual, fails to consider her feelings.

In the very beginning of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper" the unnamed first person narrator, a woman who is about to take rest for post partum blues, first describes their remote temporary lodging as follows:

 It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

    A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity but that would be asking too much of fate!

This shows us that the narrator is of a well-to-do family who has even left homes for her and her husband, John. Moreover, it is a home whose isolation and style entails Gothic characteristics.

[...] It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.[...] There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

[...] there is something strange about the house -- I can feel it.

The room in which the woman is placed to "rest" also presents traits of desolation and abandonment that further denote Gothic tendencies. However, it is ironic how the room is meant to be of a glowing, yellow hue since it once had been a nursery. Yet, even these innocent qualities do not take away from its ugliness. Our narrator absolutely hates that paper.

    It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore.

    The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off -- the paper -- in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

We know that her obsession commences shortly after her entrance in the room, and that the story ends with her final breakdown. This shows that the room, as she claims, has some form of "evil" in it that annoys and worries her. It is all part of her own personal needs and psychological imbalance; a need to liberate the woman within from the entrapment of that yellow and cruelly isolated room.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator, her husband, her newborn child, and her sister-in-law move into a rental house for three months to give the narrator an opportunity to get better while struggling from severe depression.

The narrator notes:

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

The house is described as "a colonial mansion" and "a hereditary estate." It is a large house with several floors and beautiful grounds with all kinds of plants growing. The house is located some distance from the road, standing alone; it is three miles or more from the village. It has outbuildings and "a delicious garden."

The narrator believes that there is something "queer" about the place because they are able to rent it so inexpensively, and it has been uninhabited for quite some time. While there may have been a disagreement between the heirs of the house that accounts for the length of its abandonment, the narrator still finds it a strange place. (She does believe, however, that it would be much more interesting if it were haunted, but her husband will not hear of something so silly.)

It is on the third floor that the narrator is placed. This is to be her room only.

So we took the nursery at the top of the house.

It is a big airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore.

The room had first been a nursery. It was then converted into a playroom, and eventually into a gymnasium of some kind. That is was set up originally for children is obvious as all the windows have bars on them.

The answers may vary,but the specifics in the story point out to a) former nursery  b) a former playroom, and gymnasium, c) possibly even a former "rest cure" asylum to which, ironically, she is returning in her day. The Narrator describes it as:

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.