The main character is round and individual…but very much a product of her time. She perceives herself as weak and of lesser value than her husband. She does not make decisions or take responsibility for most aspects of her life. She allows her husband to dictate her days, and her activities. Even the writing she loves is done in secret. She writes, “There comes John, and I must put this away, --he hates to have me write a word”.

The setting and the people in the beginning of the story appear to be an “ordinary” couple going on holiday. They are excited about the home, “ancestral halls”, that they were able to secure for the summer. Yet, the narrator is hesitant. She feels that the house is “a hunted house”, and that there is “something queer about it.” She cannot understand why they would be able to rent it at such a price.

As the reader, you quickly see that this is not an ordinary couple. John, the physicia

At the end of the story she is "slithering" around the room. Seeing this John passes out and she continues to slither around the room going over John's body. John thought his wife's condition to be temporary and when he saw how far her illness had progressed he couldn't handle it.

The antagonist in the story is the wallpaper. The wallpaper is something that begins to consume the thoughts and actions of the young woman. Initially, the narrator is repulsed by the wallpaper and she feels that “the color is repellent, almost revolting”, but, eventually, it changes to something she grows fond of. “I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper, perhaps because of the wallpaper”.

Some topics in this essay:
Perkins Gilman, Seeing John, wallpaper feels, wife’s illness, foul bad yellow, foul bad, bad yellow, yellow wallpaper,