The short story follows a woman who has been sent by her physician to a colonial mansion in the country as treatment for postpartum depression. The woman, who remains nameless, is constantly dismissed and belittled by her husband, who is also a physician. He speaks to her patronizingly and ignores her protestations that the “treatment” she is being given is making her worse instead of better. She is told not to think, and not to write, and her husband believes that since he sees no reason for her suffering, it does not exist. She is kept upstairs in the mansion’s nursery, isolated behind bars and gates that she believes to be there for children’s safety, when in actuality they function to keep her imprisoned. As time passes, the woman believes that she perceives something in the wallpaper and becomes convinced that it is a trapped woman. She believes the woman is confined behind bars within the wallpaper, which mirrors the trapped feelings that she herself is experiencing living day in and day out inside the confines of the nursery. Her desire to help the woman escape, which mounts to a frenzy, is reflective of her own desire to be free from the nursery and the rest cure.

Throughout the story, the titular wallpaper functions almost as another character as it’s brought to life in the narrator’s mind. She contrasts the vitality of the wallpaper with the “dead paper” upon which she is writing the journal entries that make up the narrative. Her fascination, and disgust, with the wallpaper drive the story as she investigates its pattern and condition, and then ultimately determines that there is someone living within it. The narrator’s disdain for the paper is obvious in her descriptions; for instance, in her first mention of the wallpaper, she writes “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (p. 793). She later writes that the print was “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (p. 793). On the topic of its hue, she writes that “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow…a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (p. 793). For all of her disgust with the wallpaper, and its damaged and torn condition, she still finds herself fascinated by it, and this fascination turns into obsession, which later turns into madness.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” works so effectively because it allows the reader to step into the mind of a woman as she is driven to madness. The structure of the story, which is told in an epistolary format, adds to the reader’s affiliation with the narrator as there is an intimacy in reading her journal entries and being in on the secret that she is writing against her husband’s orders. This affiliation helps to build empathy between the reader and the narrator, which contributed to the concern that I felt for the woman when she slowly lost her mind. If the story helped to save people, as Gilman hoped, it did so because it made them see the human being at the center of the “illness” and “treatment,” forcing them to understand what truly happens when you isolate someone and take away their ability to do what brings them joy. We bear witness as the woman loses her mind, leaving us with an intimate picture of what the rest “cure” could truly do to someone’s psyche. Instead of viewing postpartum depression solely as a condition to be treated, “The Yellow Wallpaper” makes readers realize that there is a person at the center whose needs and voice deserve attention.

In a patriarchal era in which women’s voices and lived experiences were ignored in favor of what the men around them deemed to be “best,” “The Yellow Wallpaper” offers an important and valuable perspective – that of the woman herself. By placing the female patient’s voice at the forefront of her story, Gilman gives her narrator the agency that had previously been stripped from her, to tell the story of her postpartum depression and how the prescribed treatment drove her to madness instead of restoring her health. It is a reminder to each of us that the voice of the patient is of paramount importance in any instance in which an embodied condition is being treated. When we ignore the patient, and what they need, they are lost, pushed to the background, and left to disappear into their own metaphorical wallpapers.

Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine, W.W. Norton & Company, 2012, pp. 804.

Originally published by The New England Magazine, Boston, 1892

Image Credits
Illustration for ”The Yellow Wall-paper” by Joseph Henry Hatfield, 1892 from Wiki Commons
Book cover by Small, Maynard & Company, 1901 from Wiki Commons
Web image from Medhum

Film ReviewVideo

Obsession and “The Yellow Wallpaper” 

Rudy Malcom May 29, 2026

The film highlights the peril of love that demands possession.

First published in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depicts a postpartum woman whose husband, a physician, prescribes a rest cure for her so-called “nervous depression,” confining her to a nursery. The narrator’s increasing fixation on the room’s titular wallpaper reflects her descent into psychosis, culminating in her belief that a woman is trapped behind the wallpaper—and, ultimately, that she herself is that woman. 

What if the short story were told from the man’s point of view? Obsession—the micro-budget horror film that has quickly become one of the year’s biggest box-office successes—feels, in some ways, like an answer to that question. 

Directed by Curry Barker, Obsession follows Bear (played by Michael Johnston), who acquires a supernatural toy that grants his wish for his co-worker and childhood friend, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), to love him more than anyone else in the world. Nikki’s mind and body are thereby effectively hijacked, echoing the woman’s loss of agency in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Unlike Gilman’s short story, however, Obsession places us in the perspective of the controlling figure, forcing us to confront not only the horror of victimization but that of possessive desire itself. 

Bear is initially presented sympathetically: as a lonely, shy, awkward music store employee with an unrequited crush. We might relate to his desperation for connection; after all, he seems as gentle as, well, a teddy bear. While bears are also predators, the character does not see himself as a villain—and because we spend time inside his mindset, neither do we. Even as Nikki begins to behave erratically, we believe that Bear deserves a chance at romance and that he can control the situation. More troubling, we believe that he can control Nikki. 

Unlike “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in which we inhabit the woman’s mental breakdown, Obsession mostly foregrounds Bear’s fear and guilt, obscuring Nikki’s pain and suffering—at first. Hoping to alter his wish, he calls the toy’s customer support line and hears Nikki screaming in agony on the other end. He returns home to find her frozen in place, covered in excrement and vomit; later, she mutilates her own face with a broken bottle. Eventually, while she sleeps, the voice of her former self briefly resurfaces and begs him to kill her. But Bear refuses, asking, “What’s so bad about being with me?” His desire to be loved has become inseparable from his willingness to erase Nikki’s freedom. (Her surname, “Freeman,” feels heavy-handed.) The realization that we have centered Bear’s distress over the damage he has inflicted is powerfully uncomfortable.  

Gilman’s short story concludes with the protagonist rubbing against the wallpaper and declaring, “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you,” causing her husband to faint as she continues circling the room, liberated through madness. By the end of Obsession, Bear is similarly inert, but Nikki is lucid and seemingly still trapped—that is, left to grapple with the carnage unleashed by the obsessive version of herself that Bear created. 

Medicine is no longer the locus of patriarchal control it was when Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but it still carries traces of gendered authority. Barker’s Obsession critiques the insidious logic of modern “nice guy” entitlement; believing he deserves Nikki’s love, Bear prescribes not a rest cure but a “love cure” that reveals how ordinary longing and self-pity can become coercive.  

By aligning our sympathies with the perpetrator before exposing the full cost of his desire, the film tests our complicity and highlights the peril of love that demands possession. 

Web image from Capstone Pictures.