The Yellow Wallpaper

At the end of "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator breaks with reality, realizing that she is the trapped woman she believes she has seen in the wallpaper in her room. When her husband enters the...

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," John's fainting and the narrator's creeping symbolize the culmination of the narrator's mental breakdown and the complete reversal of traditional gender roles. John's...

John and his wife, the story's narrator, are living in the colonial mansion so that the wife can recover from postpartum depression. All we learn of the history of the house is that it has been empty...

The significance of the husband not wanting his wife to write represents a form of silencing of voice.  Throughout the story, this becomes clear.  John "tut- tuts" the narrator's growing...

According to the story, the woman had been in the country house, and staying up in the "atrocious" nursery, for two weeks now. Her use of the word "atrocious" to describe the room is the first...

To write a response to "The Yellow Wallpaper," consider exploring critical approaches such as feminist theory, which examines the story as a critique of the oppression of women, or psychoanalytic...

The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story of a woman as she descends into a mixed madness due to her stifling environment. The reason that the narrator mentions that her husband is a...

John won't renovate the house or replace the wallpaper in "The Yellow Wallpaper" because that would run counter to his belief that the narrator's apparent illness is all in her own head. He thinks...

The protagonist's husband doesn't keep her locked in the room, exactly. Rather, he prevents her from working or finding any positive way to spend her time because he believes she is ill with...

This passage reveals the narrator's growing desperation at her treatment as well as the complete failure of communication between husband and wife. John cannot hear and respect what his wife has to...

John is not the villain of "The Yellow Wallpaper," nor is he even the antagonist of the text. He is a representative of the real antagonist, which is society. He is not alone in his treatment of the...

Throughout Gilman's short story, there is every indication of the oppressiveness of a patriarchal system influencing the life of the unnamed narrator. She bemoans, I don't like our room a...

"The Yellow Wallpaper" employs several key literary devices, including epistolary style, irony, and an unreliable narrator. The story is presented through Jane's journal entries, showcasing her...

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the power imbalance is evident through the husband's dominance over his wife. He dismisses her opinions, controls her treatment, and confines her to a room, which...

The husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” called his wife, the narrator “a blessed little goose” and a “little girl.”  These “terms of endearment” showed how the narrator was treated like a child...

This is a difficult question to address because we simply don't have information about their intimate life; however, we can certainly speculate... John, to me, is not a likeable character, although...

John won't allow the narrator to go visit Cousin Henry and Julia because they are stimulating people liable to cause her undue excitement. John says that he will ask Henry and Julia down for a long...

There are several different possiblities for both of these characters.  John, husband and doctor to the narrator, could represent a rather stifling and oppressive influence on the narrator...

The husband, John, in the "Yellow Wallpaper" doesn't see the seriousness of his wife's deterioration because following along with the beliefs of that time, he thinks its impossible that a woman...

The patient in this story is the narrator, so the perspective we get in this story is clearly biased: we only know what the narrator reports. We learn from the patient, a young female who has...

The narrator is a young woman who suffers from depression and has been prescribed "the rest cure" by her husband. Her husband refuses to acknowledge her illness, and tries to make her well by...

John laughs at his wife for using her imagination. He does not respect his wife as an equal human being and is condescending towards her. He is afraid of the impractical and doesn't understand that...

John is a doctor for a living, and the narrator blames John's profession for her continued illness. Because he cannot locate any physical reason for illness, he does not believe that she is actually...

John's concern for his wife's health in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is well-intentioned but misguided. He dismisses her opinions and insists on the "rest cure," confining her to a room with yellow...

John calls his wife hysterical in "The Yellow Wallpaper." As both a man and a doctor, his instinctive reaction is to attach this label to his wife when she is suffering from depression following the...

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," marriage is depicted as a restrictive and controlling institution. The protagonist's husband, John, exercises authoritative control over her, dismissing her opinions and...

It is significant that the text of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper is available on the website of the U.S. Government National Institutes of Health.  Gilman’s...

This is a difficult question to answer, because I feel that perhaps we can identify both responses in the behaviour of John, the narrator's husband. I do feel that he does genuinely love his wife,...

As the story begins, readers take the first-person narrator's statements at face value, but when they learn that she is being treated for mental health issues, they should realize that she is an...

The narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story wants to believe in her husband's educated medical opinion. The reader meets John only through his wife's eyes. He seems genuinely concerned with...

The woman's ailment in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is perceived as a temporary nervous depression by her husband and doctors. They dismiss her symptoms and prescribe rest and isolation, which ultimately...

The narrator's mental illness in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is characterized by severe depression and anxiety, likely exacerbated by postpartum depression, isolation, and the oppressive treatment...

The story portrays John as a man that is unable to understand the private world and peculiar condition of his wife. He only focuses on her health because she becomes physically ill. The story also...

It's clear that the speaker's husband, John, thinks her writing is silly, unhelpful, and worthless, even that it's a weakness. Although we know that the speaker's writing is something she enjoys,...

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," elements such as the oppressive setting, the unreliable narration, and the symbolic wallpaper itself contribute to the overall meaning. These elements reflect the...

I think you are spot on with this idea. There is a definite sense in which the madness or the lunacy of the narrator worsens with the way that her husband and the doctors that are advising him...

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," John's actions significantly contribute to his wife's mental deterioration. As a physician, he dismisses her concerns, adhering strictly to the "rest cure," which isolates...

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator's husband, John, is portrayed as practical yet ignorant of his wife's mental state. He misdiagnoses her postpartum depression as a temporary nervous condition,...

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is narrated in the first-person perspective, providing an intimate view of the protagonist's mental deterioration, reflecting the oppressive gender roles of the 19th century....

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a seminal feminist text exploring the oppressive treatment of women in the 19th century. The story's symbolism, particularly the yellow...