"It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted? John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster." "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an important early work of American feminist literature. Gilmans story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. As a form of treatment for her «temporary nervous depression», the unnamed woman is forbidden from working. Charlotte Perkins Gilman used «The Yellow Wallpaper» to explore the role of women in America during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The story was first published in 1892.
