Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” written as a first person journal entry is a great example of symbolism in the literature. The narrator uses various symbols like window,nursery and wallpaper to serve as reflection of protagonist’s state of mind and indication of societal suppression. It was written during early-to-mid nineteenth century positions female imprisonment within domestic sphere. The narrator sets the wallpaper as a symbol of protagonist state of the mind. The pattern of the wallpaper is illogical and chaotic which is very similar to the sanity of narrator. In the beginning of "The Yellow Wallpaper" the narrator seemed to be very imaginative and highly expressive woman, for example she remembers terrifying herself
As her “mental disease” advances her psychological state of mind becomes parallel to the wallpaper. She becomes unstable and confusing just like the pattern she sees in the wall. The negativity she feels influences the descriptions of her surroundings, making them appear uncanny and menacing.The narrator also struggles the realization that the perplexity of the woman in the wallpaper is a symbolic version of her own situation. The visual in wallpaper that only narrator sees can be considered unheimlich which Freud defines as “the name for everything that ought to have remained…. Hidden and secret and has become visible,” (Freud 3). The word ‘creep’ as verb could create an ghostly feeling for the reader. In the story, ‘creep’ becomes the narrator’s favored adjective for describing how she feels and how she personifies the wallpaper: “watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy” (653), “for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight”, “creeping along”, “caught creeping”, “when I creep by daylight”