Knowra The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper A 1892 short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in which a woman confined for treatment becomes obsessed with the wallpaper in her room. Its first-person narration exposes the effects of isolation and denied autonomy.
Unreliable narrator : A narrator whose account is compromised by limited knowledge, bias, or distorted perception. The narrator’s changing account makes the wallpaper’s imagined figure difficult to separate from her perceptions.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman : An American writer, lecturer, and social reformer known for works on women’s economic and social independence. Gilman drew on her experiences of illness and medical advice when shaping the story.
John (The Yellow Wallpaper) : The narrator’s physician husband in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story. His authority over both treatment and household life structures the narrator’s confinement.
Feminist literary criticism : Literary criticism that examines how texts represent gender, power, and social structures. The story is frequently read as a critique of patriarchal authority and women’s restricted lives.
Gothic fiction : A literary mode featuring dread, confinement, decaying spaces, and unsettling psychological or supernatural events. The nursery’s barred windows and oppressive wallpaper turn domestic confinement into Gothic horror.
New England Magazine : An American monthly literary magazine published from 1886 to 1900. It first published “The Yellow Wallpaper” in January 1892.
The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper : The unnamed first-person protagonist of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story. Her journal records the changing perceptions through which the story unfolds.
Medical humanities : An interdisciplinary field examining health, illness, and medicine through the humanities and arts. The story invites scrutiny of how medical authority shapes and silences a patient.
First-person narrative : A narrative told by a character using first-person pronouns and presenting events through that character’s perspective. The private journal form restricts the story to the narrator’s increasingly unstable viewpoint.
Rest cure : A nineteenth-century medical regimen for nervous disorders that prescribed rest, isolation, and restricted activity. The story depicts a rest-cure-like treatment that suppresses the narrator’s work and self-expression.
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