Charlotte's Web

In 1890 the American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a remarkable short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," about a woman--genteel, educated, with more than a casual taste for intellectual life--who is suffering from an indefinable malady, a nervous complaint. Her husband, a kind, intelligent doctor, has brought her to a beautiful country house for three months of the complete rest he knows will lead to recovery. The room to which he guides our narrator is a third-floor nursery with lovely views, bars on the windows and, on its walls, a peeling, figured yellow wallpaper that the woman hates on sight: the color a sickly hue, odious to her, the design repellent.

The days and nights pass without purpose or occupation. Instead of getting better, the narrator seems to be getting worse. She suggests that perhaps if she could visit some stimulating friends or have congenial work she would progress. No, her husband insists, exactly the opposite. All the famous doctors of the time are agreed on this question: There is nothing worse for someone in her condition than stimulation.

Against her will, the narrator's attention is drawn, repeatedly and obsessively, to the hateful yellow wallpaper. She soon concludes that there are two layers of paper, and at night the upper one moves. Then she sees the figure of a woman trapped between the layers. The upper layer is moving because she is shaking it, as though in an effort to release herself.

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