The Yellow Wallpaper (Top Stories)

 In the late 1800s, a young woman named Jane and her husband, John, rented a large, old mansion for the summer. John, a physician, believed that the change of scenery would help Jane recover from a nervous condition. Jane was confined to a large room on the top floor of the mansion, which had a strange, yellow wallpaper.

At first, Jane was happy to be away from home and surrounded by beautiful gardens and fresh air. However, she soon became frustrated with her confinement and the lack of freedom in her daily routine. John, who was overly protective, forbade Jane from writing or participating in any activity that he believed would exacerbate her condition.

Jane became obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her room. She spent hours staring at it and trying to decipher the pattern. As time passed, she began to imagine that the wallpaper was alive, moving and changing in response to her emotions.

Jane's condition worsened, and she began to experience hallucinations and delusions. She became convinced that there was a woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper and that it was her duty to set her free. Jane began to tear off the wallpaper in an attempt to release the woman, despite her husband's protests.

As her mental state deteriorated, Jane's behavior became increasingly erratic. She refused to leave her room and refused to eat, becoming dangerously thin. Her husband, oblivious to the severity of her condition, continued to treat her as if she were simply overreacting.

Finally, one night, Jane locked herself in her room and continued to tear at the wallpaper until she had created a hole large enough to crawl through. She believed that she had freed the woman from behind the wallpaper and had become the woman herself.

John, alerted by Jane's screams, broke down the door and found his wife crawling on the floor, covered in bits of torn yellow wallpaper. He was horrified by her condition and immediately sought help. Jane was committed to an asylum, where she remained for the rest of her life.

The story of Jane's descent into madness and obsession with the yellow wallpaper became famous in the medical community and sparked a debate about the treatment of women with mental illness. The story was later published as a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and has become a classic in feminist literature.