The Yellow Wallpaper

This semi-autobiographical short story details how Charlotte Perkins Gilman suffered from postpartum depression and was forced to endure lonely isolation intended to cure hysteria.

An unnamed woman regales her story through diary entries as she suffers through enforced isolation. Following a bout of postpartum psychosis, the woman is prescribed bed rest by her physician husband. The couple rent an old mansion in the countryside, and the woman is trapped in an upstairs room with loathsome yellow wallpaper that slowly takes over her mind. She’s banned from working or writing and does so secretly while commenting on society’s complex patriarchal oppression.

First published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is an early feminist short story and an important piece of American literature. This volume features an author biography as well as her essay, ‘Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper’, not to be missed by fans of feminist writings.