The Yellow Wallpaper

An English reading edition hosted by Project Gutenberg. Read the short story twice. Mark what the narrator reports, infers and cannot verify.

How to study this source

• How do you build an interpretation from the words on the page?

  coreComplete short story

  Read the short story twice. Mark what the narrator reports, infers and cannot verify.

• How does a story guide what we notice?

  coreOpen the free text and read the first three journal entries

  A narrator’s selection of detail affects what a reader can infer.

• How can we test a narrator’s account?

  coreThe complete short story, then reread its final third

  Compare a narrator’s assertions with details the same narrator reports.

Ideas and questions

Read background definitions when a term blocks the argument. Then return to the source and reconstruct its claim in your own words.

Read alongside, read against

• The Garden Party, and Other Stories

  Katherine Mansfield. Compare assumptions, evidence and scope with the source above. These are editorial companions, not necessarily direct responses.

• The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2

  Edgar Allan Poe. Compare assumptions, evidence and scope with the source above. These are editorial companions, not necessarily direct responses.

• Macbeth

  William Shakespeare. Compare assumptions, evidence and scope with the source above. These are editorial companions, not necessarily direct responses.

• Metamorphosis

  Franz Kafka. Compare assumptions, evidence and scope with the source above. These are editorial companions, not necessarily direct responses.

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

  Frederick Douglass. Compare assumptions, evidence and scope with the source above. These are editorial companions, not necessarily direct responses.