The Yellow Wallpaper

Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Narrated by Cathy Dobson

First published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's semi-autobiographical story The Yellow Wallpaper is her best known work. Written from the perspective of a woman suffering post-partum psychosis, it draws the listener into a world which is both terrifying and fascinating, where strange events occur and where even the wallpaper takes on a sinister and creepy significance.

The narration and language are masterful, but it is the way the listener is invited to empathise and almost experience the mental illness first hand which make a lasting impression.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Door Consulting
• Release date: Nov 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467668378

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Connecticut. Her father left when she was young and Gilman spent the rest of her childhood in poverty. As an adult she took classes at the Rhode Island School of Design and supported herself financially as a tutor, painter and artist. She had a short marriage with an artist and suffered serious postnatal depression after the birth of their daughter. In 1888 Gilman moved to California, where she became involved in feminist organizations. In California, she was inspired to write and she published The Yellow Wallpaper in The New England Magazine in 1892. In later life she was diagnosed with breast cancer and died by suicide in 1935.

Reviews for The Yellow Wallpaper

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant story of madness! Fascinating piece for its historical value as Ms. Gilman is protesting the common treatment at the time the story was written given to women who were suffering "nervous" disorders. A cautionary tale but extremely frightening because of its reality.

[jamey oneal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

what's not to love? A perfect length to enjoy while whipping up a quick brunch on a Sunday afternoon around Halloween.
A classic tale, excellently narrated.

[Kris M. · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic! This narrator has such a lovely voice.

[Emily Mendoza · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was by far the greatest short story I’ve ever read. I feel sorry for the woman who was driven to madness but I find the humor in the last scene as she becomes the woman in the wall. I don’t find it funny like a freak show. I feel like I could have been her if my life had been born in a different era.

[moniquesnyman-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A creepy psychological horror with subtle feminism undertones. I truly enjoyed this one, because it showed how helpless women of the past were in certain situations, governed by their fathers, husbands, and brothers.

[Dianna Diaz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’m not gonna lie I didn’t even realize she had went mad when I finished the book it felt like her husband was just against her.

[Moribund Murdoch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A lovely creepy cabin fever story with well intentioned treatments that triggered and compounded madness overtime.

[Bailey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A short and pretty interesting novel. A slow build up of crazy before very suddenly turning it up to eleven at the end. I wish there was a little more written about what happens to the narrator— while I get that the journal format would make the difficult, we were already fudging it a little in the last moments regardless.

[5ghqn9rzfq · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great I really enjoyed listening to this great little book

[Lucia Garcia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Whaaat?? This book is genius. With only a few pages the author really gets you there, into the whole situation of the control freak of a husband, misogynistic society and madness this woman is driven into.
Wonderful.

[leirali · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite pieces of short fiction ever. I was first exposed to this story during my senior year of high school, where I just wrote it off as a creepy story. I enjoyed it, but I didn't really GET it. This 6,000 word story, written as a journal of a woman's descent into madness, is deceptively simple.I came across it again years later, and I saw it in a different way. An extremely personal way. I related to this narrator in that I feared ending up like her. And if I'd been born in her time, I very well might have. I chose this story to be the focus of a research paper for a lit class, and studied it once again for another lit class. I am very familiar with this story and I've lost count of how many times I've read it. But every time I read it, I get a new feeling from it, and it chills me all over again.

[ralphlagana · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you've any appreciation for short stories that stand the test of time, then you're sure to like this one.

Gilman's story of woman in a room with yellow wallpaper sounds about as dry and bland as one can imagine, which is precisely why one needs to read it to see how dangerous preconceived ideas can be.

Gilman's narrator is bubbly and energetic initially, then changes begin to settle in -changes which leave her state of mind on the precipice of ruination. Does she manage to hold herself together? Or, does she slip into horrifying madness?

[Louise Colclough · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic book!

[Hubert Giblin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an exceptional piece of literary work by writing “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Ms. Gilman did a remarkable job at the characterization of what individuals face at times securing appropriate behavioral health care. Outstanding piece of American literature.
H. J. Giblin

[Jilaina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

well read and an amazing glimpse into what having a mental illness so long ago was like.

[Erin LeBeau · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite short stories of all time, it’s marvelous!! I can’t recommend it enough!!! 5 stars for the story but only 2 stars for this reader, she is not for me, too dramatic in the wrong way.

[MarHasHobbies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm confused.... At first I tought this was a story about crazy jealous husband but last few pages changed that and now I don't know anything

[eclecticdodo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A short story chronicling one woman's descent into madness, poorly understood by those around her, and tormented by the ghastly yellow wallpaper in her bedroom. Very well told. I only wish it were longer.

[artistlibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story of choppy sentences that punctuate the rambling thoughts of a woman going mad. The narrator is an obedient wife and mother, sexually restrained and socially isolated. Her husband and brother, both physicians, confine her to an attic nursery in order to calm her nerves. Instead, she is tormented by a woman trapped inside the wallpaper “where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.”

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Even as short as it is, still too long. It would be more compelling as a paragraph or two. Probably as highly rated as it is because of its position within feminist literature, which is fine and understandable (and moderately interesting); I just didn't care for it--I found it more comical than anything else.

[msaucier818 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a short story told from the point of view of a woman who was suffering what we would today call postpartum depression. Her husband and family force her to stay on bed rest in a strange room where she slowly loses her mind based on her surroundings - especially the wallpaper in the room. While short, the story does a nice job making the reader feel for the main character, and gives us a glimpse of what it might be like to suffer from that type of depression.

[nospi-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story told in journal fashion of a woman compelled to take a rest cure by her p hysician hu s band and the result forced inactivity has on her mind.

[janepriceestrada · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am glad I read this during the day. It is quite frightening on a lot of levels. The narrator is struggling with depression stemming from the pressure of being a ‘good wife’ by society’s standards and possibly also from the recent birth of her child. As I’m sure was common at the time, she is assumed to have some sort of non-medical exhaustion by her doctor husband and brother. The cure is extended rest and absolutely no work whatsoever. Trapped in a room (of her husband’s choosing of course), she descends into a sort of madness through obsession with the wallpaper. There is a lot going on in the short story, most disturbing to me is the narrators seeming ignorance of the cause of her own depression. While she does fight in a way against her husband’s diagnosis, she doesn’t seem to feel sure about her condition herself.

[Progya Sengupta · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Love this absolutely iconic piece of feminist literature. 10 out of 10.

[Ipek Erdalli Buchanan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A gripping short story of a woman's descent into psychosis due to the oppressive attitude of her husband.

[spiritedstardust · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A story about postpartum depression, make doctors who have no idea how to treat it, and an obsession with wallpaper.This just didn’t do it for me.

[jldarden · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This had a creepy build up to a great ending. The insight into a failing mind projecting on to the people around her and her surroundings was captivating. Recommended

[ionas_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hadn’t any previous experience of this author. When reading the story I felt that it was the most horrifying piece of writing I had ever read, though when looking through it I didn’t feel that it was so bad. Reputedly, the story was based on the author’s own experience of her psychosis We’re not given the name of the woman recounting her experience, and I will call her the protagonist, or the P. Two of the first things that meet the eye are the protagonist’s negative comments about marriage, that the P’s husband John laughs at her (which is to be expected in marriage) and also negative comments about doctors. The P remarks that one reason she is not getting well faster may be because her husband is a physician. He does not believe she is “sick””, and what can one do? Both her husband and brother are doctors “of high standing” and both think there is nothing the matter with her except “a temporary nervous depression” or “slight hysterical tendency”. Perhaps at some level, then, the P feels obliged to prove them both wrong, that there really is something wrong with her; thus the need and “satisfaction” at some level to develop a full-blown psychosis. She is forbidden to work or write; but she is a woman with her own opinions and she herself feels that congenial work would do her good. She feels that if she had less “opposition” and “more society and stimulus”, she would feel better. We’re warned from the start that strange things are about to happen; she feels there is something queer, something strange, about the house. And otherwise, how had they been able to rent it so cheaply, and why would it have “"stood so long untenanted”? John is “very careful and loving” but he does not listen to his wife’s objections to the room he has chosen for them to sleep in. John is absolutely controlling; he chooses the house and the bedroom they’ve to sleep in and dictates what the P is permitted to do. When the P tells her left-brained husband what she feels about the house, he has so little understanding of what she’s talking about that he claims what she felt was a draught! She would have preferred to use as a bedroom a downstairs room with roses all over the window, but John wouldn’t hear of it. John has a “schedule prescription” for each hour in the day – the utnost control. Is this a general criticism of the control of all, or most, husbands of the times? At least the P is permitted to eat that which her appetite dictates, at any rate, “somewhat”. The room John chose for the bedroom was the former nursery that had bars on the windows. This is metaphoric for the P’s feeling of imprisonment when confined to the room. She had never seen worse wall-paper in her life. The colour of the wall-paper is a “smoldering unclean yellow”. John hates her to have to write a word. The P tells us that she is suffering, whereas logical John says there is no reason to suffer. (This is his subjective opinion.) She says her baby is “so dear” but she cannot be with him since it makes her so nervous. She supposes John was never nervous in his life. I will not cite any more details but will talk in a general manner. The author discloses in a gradual and subtle manner the start of the psychosis. First, she becomes convinced there is a woman or several women behind bars in the wall-paper, trying to get out. Later, she fails to distinguish between herself and the woman/women. She begins to display a slight paranoia, in that she gets a little afraid of John and Jennie (John’s sister), and feels they both give her strange looks. She projects her own problems onto John, and she thinks that he is getting queer now. She doesn’t like the look in John’s eyes and feels he is only pretending to be loving and kind. Now she. sees many creeping women outside, creeping so fast. Finally, she talks about she herself having to get back behind the pattern. She thinks she is the woman or one of the women behind the pattern. Eventually, John comes in the room and sees her creeping on the floor, realizes something is very wrong and faints. To sum up, I felt this to be an excellent and superbly written story and may read some of the author’s other stories.

[villemezbrown · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I originally read this story in 1994, and I welcomed the chance to revisit it with Sara Barkat's 2020 graphic novel that uses GIlman's full and complete text.Such a creepy bit of psychological horror. It reminded me of the Lovecraftian works I've read recently, and it got me to wondering how much Gilman might have influenced Lovecraft. Sure enough, his mother knew her while she was a governess in Providence and Lovecraft is on record mentioning the story on several occasions.Barkat's art is not as polished as I prefer, but it certainly adds a wonderful new dimension to Gilman's most unsettling prose.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting piece of short fiction about a woman living in a rented house. She seems to be suffering from depression, perhaps even post-partum depression because there is mention of a baby. Her physician husband alternately coddles her and dismisses her complaints. At his insistance they made their bedroom the old nursery at the top of the house which is papered with a hideous yellow paper. The paper has been torn off in spots. The narrator thinks the room must have been used by young boys but it becomes clear that someone else was confined here before the narrator came. As the days go by she becomes fixated on the design in the wallpaper. She believes there is a woman behind bars who tries to get out, especially at night. Is this a hallucination or is she projecting her own self on the design? And is her husband imprisoning her or is she imprisoning herself? There are no answers just more questions.