The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a writer whose husband has forbade her to work due to a mysterious ailment called “temporary nervous depression,” or “a slight hysterical tendency” (131). She is married to a physician named John and has recently given birth to a baby boy. With her husband John, their infant son and two others, the narrator spends a summer in a rented mansion in the countryside. Although she claims an attachment to her infant son, the narrator cannot bear to spend time with him, which suggests she is suffering from what is now understood to be postpartum depression and/or anxiety. As the summer passes, the narrator spends little time in the company of others, and her mental health steadily declines until she loses all sense of reality. Although she makes efforts to alert her husband to her worsening condition and to her own treatment preferences, he ignores her wishes and condition, which only makes the situation worse. The narrator appears to know what she needs, but she is denied and dismissed, which only intensifies her decline.

The issue of the narrator’s name is unclear. In her last spoken statement of the story, the narrator says to John, “I’ve got out at last […] in spite of you and Jane” (147).