The story begins with a woman who is mildly depressed. To cure her, her husband and physician, John, moves the family to a large estate in the country. The rest cure was very popular at that time and it consisted of just that, hours upon hours of rest. When they get to the estate, the woman is given the largest room in the house, an airy room upstairs that she say use to be a nursery but was converted to a gymnasium. The room is very strange. It has a huge wooden bed that is nailed to the floor and it had bars on the window. However, the strangest aspect of all is the wallpaper. It is a stale, putrid yellow with a perplexing design that is impossible to follow to an end. The woman also tells us that parts are ripped off and there is a "smooch" low on the wall all around the room. So she is made to stay in the room with the paper and at first she hates it. Then she becomes more and more obsessed b

It is obvious that the woman in the believes that she is completely helpless and totally dependant on John. You can see this twice in the first page of the story, she says, "what is one to do," which tells us that she will not act on what she actually wants. There is also a good deal of foreshadowing in the beginning of the story. She talks about the parts of the paper that have been ripped off, the bars on the windows, the bed that's nailed down and she almost immediately refers to the design on the paper as "bars". As we read further into the story we can see that the woman steadily decreases further and further into insanity. For example, a few times she is writing about perfectly normal thing, and then just break off out of nowhere and begins talking bout the horrid paper. She then begins talking about a dim figure in the shape of a woman is looks as though she is trapped behind the paper and is trying to get out. This shape eventually becomes like a real woman to her and she tries to rip the paper down to get her out. When looking more closely at this imaginary woman and the events that take place because of her, we can start to the symbolism of the story. She says that the woman is trapped behind the paper and often she shakes and rattles it to get out. The woman in the paper represents all women, and the paper represents the oppressive s

Some common words found in the essay are:
Perkins Gilman, Yellow Wallpaper, woman story, paper represents, women paper, impossible follow, design impossible follow, mildly depressed, trapped paper, design impossible, woman tries, bed nailed, story woman,
Approximate Word count = 919
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)