The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes the form of a journal, which tells of the narrator, ostensibly brought to the countryside for a cure, becoming more and more unhinged until she descends into madness. She imagines that a woman is trapped behind the garish yellow wallpaper of her bedroom, but when she attempts to free the woman by ripping away the wallpaper, she discovers that the woman is herself.

The relationship between the woman and her caregivers—her husband and her husband's sister—is crucial to the plot. Both of them are condescending to her and dismissive of her illness. Her husband believes that it is only a "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency." By minimizing the patient's malady in this way, he remains ignorant of the more serious obsessions that are consuming her. When she tries to explain to him how she feels, he makes light of her thoughts, obviously convinced that, because he is a physician, he knows what's best for her better than she does. His sister Jennie completely defers to his judgment and therefore pays no attention to the patient's ever-worsening symptoms.

From the patient's viewpoint, she senses that there is something wrong with her husband's diagnosis and remedy. She feels that it would be best for her to be busy rather than complacent. However, because she loves her husband, she gives in to his stipulations, which worsens her condition and ultimately causes her to completely lose touch with reality.

The patient, who is the narrator, feels increasingly resentful toward her caregivers, including her husband, John. She says that perhaps it is because he is a doctor that she is not getting better. Her husband and her brother (also a doctor) do not credit her feelings that she is sick, and they ascribe her illness to a nervous condition. To remedy her illness, they suggest that she rest, but she disagrees with them and feels that she would be helped by being more active. Her husband is very solicitous about her welfare, so she feels guilty about disagreeing with him. Therefore, the patient's relationships with the men who are treating her are filled with confusion and double binds. They say that they are helping her, but she feels suffocated and stifled by them.

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 recently given birth, that her primary caregivers are her husband John and John’s sister Jennie. The patient's relationship with each of them is untherapeutic and may even be the cause of further deterioration. 

John, as the male and as a physician, is the dominant caregiver. Although the narrator has little power over her “treatment” and must listen to what John says, her initial attitude is one of skepticism. She explains that although both her husband and her brother, also a physician, believe that a regimen of rest and tonics will “cure” her, she is not so sure. However, as a woman who is suffering from depression in the 19th century, she must defer to the authority of her husband. The relationship is not based on mutual respect and trust, but on power and control.

The second caregiver is Jennie, whom the narrator describes as an “enthusiastic” and unambitious housekeeper. Although Jennie is solicitous and shows apparent concern, the narrator tells us that Jennie thinks that it is writing (the narrator’s profession) that has made her sick in the first place. As a result, the narrator must be secretive about her writing so that she is not caught – and reported – to her husband. Thus this second patient-caregiver relationship is not healthy either; Jennie is part babysitter, part spy.

Neither of these patient-caregiver relationships is healthy; both are based on uneven power dynamics, and each is further damaged by a lack of trust. It is no wonder that Jane (the narrator) gets progressively worse through the story, eventually having a psychotic split and descending into madness.