A seemingly harmless, reasonably well-to-do woman obsesses over the interior design of the house she and her husband are renting. How that becomes the basis for a gripping story is anyone's guess. Yet Gilman accomplishes something pretty amazing: she actually freaks us out over something as random as wallpaper, while also getting us to understand a woman's isolation and eventual madness—all, by the way, in very few pages.

Still, some of your students might wonder what the narrator's problem is or what the story is about ("Wallpaper? Seriously?") after their first read-through. That's why, given the story's length, you should encourage your students to read this one twice. You might even assign it for homework, and then, after a brief discussion, read it aloud in class, stopping every so often to make sure everyone is coming along for the ride.