The story can also be seen as a rich account of neurasthenia or nervous exhaustion, a disorder first defined by Mitchell in his book Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked in 1871. United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division / Wikipedia The narrator spends much of her days being cared for – and often left alone – in this room, reading, attempting to write (though the subterfuge this involved leaves her weary, she noted) and, increasingly, watching the wallpaper, as it starts to take on a life of its own.Ĭharlotte Perkins Gilman. It is the room’s wallpaper, a “repellant” and “smouldering unclean yellow”, with “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” that forms the centrepiece of the story. Perhaps, the narrator muses, it had once been a nursery or playroom.
The wallpaper is torn, the floor scratched and gouged. The room her husband selects as their bedroom, though large, airy and bright, is barred at the window and furnished with a bed that is bolted to the floor. The house is “queer”, long abandoned and isolated.
There she is to rest, take tonics, air and exercise – and absolutely forbidden to engage in intellectual work until well again.
The narrator is brought by her physician husband to a summer retreat in the countryside to recover from her “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency”. Gilman’s short story is a straightforward one.
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