The Yellow Wallpaper: An Early Work of American Feminist Literature

The Yellow Wallpaper is widely regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating 19th century attitudes towards women's physical and mental health. The book is presented in the first person through a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a summer home. She is forbidden from working and has to hide her journal from him so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period. The story depicts the effect of confinement on the narrator's mental health and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper.