The Yellow Wallpaper
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.
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The Yellow Wallpaper
By Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
"The Yellow Wallpaper" (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards the mental and physical health of women in the 19th century.
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Bite reviewed this specific edition as public domain using the source, jurisdiction records, and dated evidence below. Public domain is a legal status rather than a licence, and it may differ by country or edition.
- Edition
- Project Gutenberg eBook #1952 — plain-text edition
- Source text
- Open the source edition
- Review coverage
- 44 jurisdictions · latest check 31 Aug 2026
Review all jurisdiction evidenceauthor Gilman, Charlotte Perkins died 1935. All identified copyright-relevant edition contributors are beyond the conservative expiry cutoff applied from the cited jurisdictional duration rule as of 2026-08-31.
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A look inside
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Read passages from The Yellow Wallpaper. Each sample opens without an account.
- Hidden writing
- Secrets in the Wallpaper
- A Figure in the Paper
- Moonlight on the Wallpaper
- Walls that terrify and entertain
- An Empty House, A Queerness
- A Room Scarred by Struggle
- She Creeps by Day
- Wallpaper Like Wallowing Seaweed
- Could It Be the Paper?
- Angry Enough to Leap
- Fondness for a Troubling Room
- The Worst Paper
- A Plea Against Dangerous Thoughts
- The Strong Chair
- When It Turns Back
- Calling for an Axe
- The Upside-Down Eyes
- Misread Suffering
- Torn Paper, New Freedom
- Women behind the pattern
- A schedule for rest
- A Pattern That Hides
- Trying to Climb Through
- Bars in the Moonlight
- No One Touches the Paper
- Meant to Be a Comfort
- A Yellow Smell
- Do They Come From the Paper?
- Repellent Yellow
- The pattern's shriek
- Smiling Through Exhaustion
- The Figure Behind the Design
- When the Pattern Moves
- A Pattern That Follows
- The Shame of Daylight Secrets
- A Pattern of Contradictions
- Something behind the wallpaper
- Caught at the Paper
- Grotesques in Sunlight
- A Rope, a Plan, and One Small Limitation
- Nailed-Down Bed
- They Can't Look Away
- Afraid of John
- Open the Door
- Crying at Nothing
- When doctors won't listen
- A Pattern That Won't Behave
- Why She Won't Improve
- Preferring the Yellow Room
- The Pattern's Horror
- Unblinking Eyes on the Wall
- The woman in the pattern