The Yellow Wallpaper

"It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old, foul, bad yellow things."

First published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the most haunting and influential short stories in American literature. Told through the secret journal of a woman confined for a “rest cure” by her physician husband, it charts her slow descent into obsession and madness as she begins to see a trapped woman moving behind the patterns of the wallpaper.

This annotated edition, by Celia Harrow, restores the story’s original power while deepening its historical and psychological context. It brings together three essential texts that illuminate Gilman’s art and intent:

The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) – Gilman’s gothic masterpiece of confinement and rebellion, exposing the dangers of silencing women under patriarchal medicine.
Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913) – Gilman’s own reflection on her ordeal with postpartum depression and the misguided “rest cure” that inspired the story.
Confinement and Resistance: Reading The Yellow Wallpaper in Its Time and Ours – A new Forward by Celia Harrow, exploring the story’s themes of madness, marriage, creativity, and liberation for contemporary readers.

Richly contextualized and meticulously introduced, this volume invites readers to see The Yellow Wallpaper not only as a gothic tale of psychological horror, but as a feminist manifesto that continues to challenge the structures of power and silence in every generation.
Perfect for students, scholars, and modern readers alike, this edition offers insight into why Gilman’s story remains as urgent and unsettling today as when it first appeared more than a century ago.