Yellow Wallpaper Setting

In the story The Yellow Wall Paper, the narrator is suffering from nervous depression. Her husband, John, a physician, believed that her best possible option for treatment was to live in a house that was away from everything for the summer. This house proved to not be as effective as originally thought. The setting of the story, which revolves around the house, specifically the room with the yellow wallpaper, played a large role on the narrator. The house is a secluded estate, and a short distance from nearby village in England. “The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village…There are hedges and walls, gates that lock and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners

“The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman, 85). This wallpaper immediately set off a nervous feeling about it. It was almost like the narrator believed that it had some type of supernatural power. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman, 86). By this point the already nervous narrator was beginning to go downhill. She was allowing the wallpaper to take control of her life. She then begins to see things in and behind the wallpaper, and she believes that the things are crawling around. “Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd blinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman, 86). At this point, it is evident that her mental health is quickly deteriorating due to the fact that she believes that her wallpaper is moving and is basically alive. Another factor that shows this is here unwillingness to do anything, and she often finds herself crying. “I cry at nothing and cry most of the time” (Gilman, 88). She is constantly tracing the pattern with her mind, which consistently tires her out. It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess” (Gilman, 88). During this exhaustion, the narrator believes that she is now identifying a woman moving behind the paper. “It is like

“It was a nursery first and then a playroom.” (Gilman 84) This seemed to play a big role on how people, specifically the husband, treated the narrator. They treated her like a child that needed babying. “What is it, little girl?...Don’t go walking about like that- you’ll get cold.” (Gilman 90) This is a grown woman yet she is treated like a child. This treatment has to be a result of the nursery themed room that was surrounding the