Symbolism In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Along with this hyperbole, the author uses personification to show that the wallpaper has a “smell” and distinctio to portray this smell as one that “creeps all over the house” (Gilman 7). At the end of the story, the woman loses all of her sanity and vigorously begins peeling off the wallpaper to free the women trapped behind the yellow wallpaper even though it “hurt” her “teeth”. The ending also contains situational irony because the woman ends up gaining back all of her freedom by freeing the trapped women, or herself,

During the three month stay at the mansion, Jane constantly debates her inner thoughts; the need to be the woman she was expected to be, versus having the freedom she longs for. Jane begins to hallucinate about a woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of her room and subsequently has a mental breakdown. One can conclude, that the cause of Jane’s breakdown was the oppression she suffered at the hands of her husband.

She is not improving with her husband’s orders, but she has now surprisingly become fascinated with the wallpaper. The paper already had small tears in parts of it, so Jane decided that she was going to peel the rest of it away herself in hopes of seeing the woman inside of it set free. An online discussion about the ending of the story states, “Towards the end of the story, she narrates as if she is healing and recovering” (Kim). As the peeling of the wallpaper progresses, the narrator reveals that Jane actually sees herself stuck behind the hideous, yellow wallpaper. This holds an important symbol in the story.

Throughout the story, she is fixated on the “” patterns and where they start and how they fit together. After some time in the room, the narrator notes that the patterns morphe to become a woman behind bars which represent how the narrator is really feeling, trapped. As a result her own existence becomes, “mirrored in the wallpaper…(Korb n.pag.).”

The woman in the wallpaper is trapped just like she is. The narrator creates a figure that she could relate to and then spends all her time focused on the figure and trying to figure out how to help the woman in the wallpaper escape her cell. As the story continues and she remains isolated, it is obvious Jane views herself as the woman inside the wallpaper. As a result of being trapped in her room, she begins to lose her sanity. She believes she is trapped in the wallpaper and must escape its holds.

At first it is seen as nothing but an old ruined wallpaper with a “bad” pattern. As the story progresses she stares at the paper for hours and sees a sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. She hen sees a desperate woman trying to leave the wallpaper which shows how the women feel trapped. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the oppressive life that many women have today and back then.

She sees in the pattern: “unblinking eyes everywhere” (196). She then perceives “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” behind the design. Later on, a woman takes form as trapped behind the curves of the wallpaper. The wallpaper woman becomes alive shaking the bars at night and become free creeping around to escape the wallpaper during the day. The narrator enters in a frenetic phase where she locks herself up in the bedroom, bites and tears off the wallpaper.

This differs greatly from Jane, who begins to sympathize with the plight of all domestic women through her experience with the woman behind the yellow wallpaper. Although she initially frowned upon the woman’s efforts to escape, the more her mental health deteriorated, the more she began to relate her plight to that of the trapped woman, both prisoners desperate for escape. With her newfound revelation, she sought to save the trapped woman from her prison, subconsciously freeing herself in the process. “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her…I wonder if they all came out of that wallpaper as I did?… “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane!

As a part of her treatment John & her brother (who is also a physician) advise her not to use her imagination in any way & rest, so her secret journal entries are the only kind of mental stimulus she has.   As the story unfolds the narrator 's mind begins to run wild. She becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper that is in the old nursery room where she & John sleep. It reaches a point where she imagines a woman is trapped behind this stained horrid wallpaper.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that deals with the concepts of madness and gender inequality. The narrator in the story is a suppressed woman who is trapped in a small room as part of the treatment of her illness. She is unable to write or take care of her baby as a good and healthy mother can. The narrator, who suffers from a mental illness and resents gender inequality as well as her inability to express herself, is a vehicle through which Gilman criticizes mainstream opinions and closemindedness regarding these issues through the use of symbolism and imagery.

At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.

Though something to her feels off about this house. As they explore the house they, discover a nursery with yellow wallpaper inside. The woman becomes obsessed with this wallpaper, trying to decipher each and every pattern, logging all of it into her diary which she keeps away from her

The narrator leads a fairly boring life. The only thing she seems to do all day is sleep, write, eat, look out the window and study the yellow wallpaper in her room. Evidence of this in the story is “I lie here on this great immovable bed - it is nailed down, I believe - and follow that pattern about by the hour” (Gilman 650). Another piece of evidence would be, “The color is repellant, almost revolting ; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (Gilman 649).

It is a story that could actually happen. In the story, Jane expresses concerns about her mental health to her husband, John, a doctor, who through good intentions and believing that he is doing the right thing, requires that his wife stays in bed all the time, and not do any of the things she would normally or would like to do. Due to being bed ridden, Jane becomes worse until she reached the limit and goes crazy. John’s behavior and decisions at this time were considered to be completely normal. The Yellow Wallpaper is considered to fall in the genre of realism because it represents the way life was for women during the nineteenth century.

She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it