The Yellow Wall-Paper is a compilation of journal entries from a “mere ordinary” woman who has recently moved into a colonial mansion for the summer with her husband. Throughout the entire story, the woman seems to be progressively getting more and more sick and more captivated by the yellow wallpaper. The story concludes with a final journal entry that is the most perplexing of them all, I believe, confirming the incurable delusions that will continue to haunt the woman.

As the story progresses, so does the woman’s illness. She writes, “Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere, (4)” and “there are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. (6)” These brief hints are leading up to the ultimate realization that she believes there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper, “plain as can be. (7)” The woman is becoming noticeably agitated with the wallpaper until she finally comes to terms with the ugliness and seeks to find the secret within the paper before anyone else does.

The woman talks about her last night in the room and her attempt to save the trapped woman by saying, “As soon as it was moon-light and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern I got up and ran to help her. (8)” We, as readers, believe that she has gone insane and she tells us that she is tearing off all of the wall-paper up to her head height, all around the room in an attempt to release this “creeping woman” from her trap. We are eager to see her as someone who has lost their mind and can be helped once she leaves the room with the yellow wallpaper. That being said, once John comes home from work and lets himself into the room we learn that the woman is being plagued by more than just the yellow wallpaper.
John comes into the room and, upon seeing that the woman has tied herself up with rope and scratched off a majority of the wallpaper, cried, “What is the matter? For God’s sake, what are you doing!” She responded, over her shoulder, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” Once we have rid ourselves of the shiver that, almost necessarily, occurs after reading this response, we realize that the woman is trapped by an extremely controlling husband and sister-in-law. We are able to look back and read the story differently. We realize that the women creeping up and down the lane or in the garden or on the porch are all where she finds herself. The woman is having dissociative experience in which she sees, but does not understand, that she is the trapped woman. This, projection of herself, is likely the reason that both of these women are only referred to as, some variation of, “the woman,” confusing readers but leading us to understand that they are one in the same person, trapped.