A struggling couple, attempting to achieve romantic felicity packs their bags and moves to a secluded estate for the summer. As a house wife struggling with mental illness, the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel "The Yellow Wall-Paper," is confined by her husband John, a physician who thinks her mental illness is nothing more than nervous depression. Consequently, John's false remedy only causes her state to deteriorate. When analyzing the narrative arch of the story, the conflict and changes within the narrator are revealed. Diagnosed with neurasthenia, the narrator suffers from "nervous debility and exhaustion occurring in the absence of objective causes" (neurasthenia). In the exposition, she is moved to a room john believes is best suited for her treatment. The room, having an abundance of windows provides the narrator with the most air and sunlight of any other room in the mansion. However, the room is outfitted in a peculiar wallpaper whose grotesque appearance further irritates our narrator.
At the time, rest cure was the go to treatment when dealing with any variant of nervous illness. The method, lasting several weeks involved isolation, rest, and a specific diet, effectively reducing patients to the dependency of an infant (Rest cure). In the rising action, the narrator's condition has slightly progressed. Mainly due to isolation and lack of expression keeping her feelings bottled up, it is apparent that depression sets in. Soon after, feelings of paranoia are induced when she begins to notice a distinct figure trapped inside the wallpaper is moving and changing form. .
As result of the narrator's growing suspicions it seems as if she cannot keep the yellow wallpaper out of her thoughts. It is as if the paper possesses some kind of supernatural power constantly watching and taunting her. The narrator being both, protagonist and antagonist struggles with internal conflict.