** spoiler alert ** I was initially exposed to this book from goodreads 1001 books to read forum highlighting quick reads on that list. I read this book in one quick sitting and I was frankly astounded. The book is told from a first person narrative where a Victorian era woman likely suffering from post-partum depression is prescribed bed rest. She grows slowly insane focusing on the yellow wallpaper in her room where she is convinced she sees in the wallpaper a pattern of a woman stuck behind bars. Great ideas presented of what is sanity and what is not. Reminded me a lot of Ibsen’s “Doll House,” (John uses terms like, “What is it little girl? . . . Don’t go walking about like that - - you’ll get cold.”) but more shocking and disturbing in many ways. Almost haunting language in some spots:

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it [the wallpaper] becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

Then in the very bright spots she keep still, and in the very shady spots she takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern -- it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.

“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “In spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back.”

Other elements I liked about the novella included the idea of the unreliable narrator; how staring at bad wallpaper and bad design really can make you go crazy, the liberating experience of ripping wallpaper off a wall, and the ever present Victorian era gilded cage for women.