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Cover of The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)

  • Free to read
  • 25 min read
  • Reading level: 6th grade

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story published in January 1892. This landmark work of feminist literature and horror fiction follows a woman confined to a nursery by her physician husband as treatment for "temporary nervous depression." Forbidden from working or writing, she documents her experience through secret journal entries. With nothing to occupy her mind but the room's disturbing yellow wallpaper, she descends into madness, becoming obsessed with its strange patterns and the figures she perceives within it.

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  • Psychological fiction
  • Mentally ill women
  • Feminist fiction
  • Married women · Psychology
  • Sex role

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The Yellow Wallpaper

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

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About this edition

This free edition of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #1952, released 1999-11-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Short Stories, American Literature.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

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