The Yellow Wallpaper

The protagonist in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is actually very sick despite what her husband and brother (two doctors) believe. She knows even in the beginning of the story that something is just not right about herself. She gets moved out to a empty colonial mansion that she is not comfortable with from the start. She does believe it is a beautiful place but she still does not like it. John her husband had moved her to this Manson in the belief that is it for her benefit. He truly believe she will be able to get all the rest and fresh air out in the strange lonely place that she needs to get healthy again. She loves to write which her husband insists will not help her get better faster. John does not want her thinking or exercising her brain at all. So to respect her husbands wishes she keeps him in the dark about her writings. The longer she is there the worse it is, she is getting sicker even thought her husband seems to think she is getting better. She attempts to express her feeling with her husband but he does not have the time for her foolishness and he is in denial to her condition. Toward the end of the story her illusions have become even stronger. At first she believes there is a woman in the wall shaking and moving around, crawling through the wall. This happens at night because during the day the woman or women are outside creeping around the garden and shaded lanes. She is unsure how many there are because she sees them everywhere. Is it because there is more than one or is it because the woman creeps so fast, she wonders. At the end, her sickness as become so bad that she is intensely involved or preoccupied and affected with madness, that she now believes that she is part of the wallpaper and only comes out during the day. She is intensely trying to get all the wall paper off the walls so she will not have to be put back in there when night falls. She has come to believe that her husband is the one that has been keeping her trapped in the wall and she was bound and determined to stop him.

The shifts of the plot change a little closer to the end in the last section starting at paragraph 18 or 20 when the protagonist starts to realize that she the woman in the wall.