Summary

The narrator finds it odd that ordinary people like her husband, John, and herself were able to secure a colonial mansion for the summer. She finds the long-empty house to be strange and believes it may be haunted. However, her physician husband is a practical man who laughs at her superstitions. He also does not believe that his wife is sick, insisting that she suffers from a temporary nervous depression and slight hysterical tendency. His prescribed remedy is to forbid his wife from working, but she believes that change and excitement would benefit her health, so she sneaks and writes in her journal, though she finds it exhausting. Since the narrator agrees with John's warning that thinking about her condition will make it worse, she focuses on describing the house which is beautiful but odd. The wife grows angry when John does...