Symbolism In The Chrysanthemums, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In literature, symbolism is used to provide meaning to the object or writing that is further than what is actually being described. The action and the plot that takes place in a story can be assumed of as one level, while the symbolism of other things in the writing act on different level to not only enhance the story but give regular objects, people, or places meanings.
A problem with symbols is that the readers expect them to just be objects and images rather than events or actions but in reality, it can be both. The use of symbolism can help the reader conclude a much thoughtful or deeper message that is not seen by the naked eye but rather deeply hidden by the author. Three different authors of three different works, “The Chrysanthemums”,
It seems that the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, based the thought of the story on her own personal experience in the nineteenth century. It was described how the wallpaper reduced the narrator’s imagination and artistic abilities, restrained them (Bak, par. 19). "The Yellow Wallpaper" then turned into a feminist text that had symbolized men who were responsible for the narrator’s confinement and mental destruction. It was believed that the narrator is eventually freed from her "panopticon". The narrator of the yellow wallpaper did eventually “free herself”. The author points out how the yellow wallpaper was so attached to feminism that some feminist critics believe she was trapped and defeated by men but “…believed she freed herself from her ‘male-imposed shackles’…John exposes her to instruments of restraint ranging from shackles on the wall to the locked front gates but she is only affected by the yellow wallpaper” (Bak, par. 3). She believed the shackles were children's toys and the barred windows were for children’s safety who lived in the mansion prior to them. The only thing that mentally restrained her was the yellow wallpaper, in which eventually drove her mad. He states that she believed that it had a haunting pattern where he compared it to Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth century Panopticon, which had a recurrent spot where the pattern looks like a broken neck and two eyes that stared at the prisoners upside down and eventually mentally tore them