Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer and the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, she is forbidden from working, but encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency, a diagnosis common to women in that period. She hides her journal from her husband and his sister the housekeeper, fearful of being reproached for overworking herself. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper, descending slowly into psychosis.
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) gained much of her fame with lectures on women’s issues, ethics, labor, human rights, and social reform. She often referred to these themes in her fiction. She is best remembered for her 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” based on her own bout with severe postpartum depression and misguided medical treatment.
Erin Yuen is an audiobook narrator whose readings include Kay Hooper’s Captain’s Paradise, Hanya Yangihara’s The People in the Trees, and Barbara Delinsky’s The Dream Unfolds.