Preview

Symbolism of the Yellow Wallpaper

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
266 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Symbolism of the Yellow Wallpaper
“The yellow wallpaper” in the story is resulted from the narrator’s perception that the wallpaper is a topic she must analyze. She believed that the yellow wallpaper symbolizes things that deeply affect her emotion. The wallpaper expands its symbolism accordingly throughout the story.

In the beginning, the yellow wallpaper is quite unpleasant. The writer describes it as soiled, ripped and an unclean yellow. Moreover, it is of a shapeless pattern that makes the narrator try to figure out how it is organized. When the narrator stares at the wallpaper intensively, she can see a ghostly pattern behind the paper, only visible in certain kind of light. The pattern gradually develops into a desperate woman who crawls and stoops, and tries to escape from the main pattern. At the end, the pattern starts to resemble to become the bars of a cage. The narrator describes that the cage decorates with the heads of many women and all women is trying to escape from the cage.

It can tell from the narrator’s description that the wallpaper, in fact, represents women’s status in the family and in the society in which all of them are trying to escape from the difficult situation and the tradition. The narrator finds herself is trapped by the condition and social perceptions towards women. Gilman, the writer, uses the wallpaper as a symbol to illustrate the nightmarish, horrible domestic life in which so many women are trapped.

The writer also uses the image of wallpaper to mock the questionable, ineffective and even disastrous quiet rest therapy suggested by

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The wallpaper in "The Yellow Wallpaper" was a symbol of imprisonment, restraint, and control. As described by the narrator, the wallpaper "became bars" imprisoning the "woman" in the wallpaper. The narrator herself…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" is depicted by the narrator’s sense that the wallpaper is something to interpret, it is a shadow of something that personally effects her. At first it seems merely unpleasant because it is dirty and ripped, and an "unclean yellow." Which could relate to how by the end of the story our main character has went insane, her mind is unclean. Even the description of the house starts out as the "most beautiful" place, standing desolate without any form of civilisation. Which could foreshadow our main character within the end of the story, a beautiful shell of a woman - yet her mind is so far way from any form of sanity. "There were greenhouses too, but they're all broken now" - 'broken' being the key word. She is a broken woman, a term often used for those who have lost their minds. The wallpaper in the story is described as "dull yet lurid" - could it symbolise that this woman was fairly average, yet there is something more about her, something more to her than meets the eye?…

    • 849 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator in, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” suffers from depression, although her husband, who is a doctor, does not consider it an illness. Therefore, he keeps her on a strict rest cure. She is not allowed to do work of any form, not even care for her baby. All she allowed to do is rest in her room and breath in the air as prescribed by her husband. Because she spends most of her time in her room, she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in the room and it drives her to insanity. The lack of creative stimulation and relationships with others causes the narrator’s obsession with the yellow wallpaper which leads her to believe she is trapped behind bars in this yellow wallpaper.…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Within the room that Jane spends most of her time, one of the first things she describes in detail is the wallpaper. Jane believes the “wall and paint look as if a boys’ school had used it” and she continues, “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper, 610). As the weeks pass, Jane spends more and more time in the room, where she is locked away from society and social interaction. Gilman writes that Jane sees that the wallpaper has, “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 611). Jane begins to see patterns and images within the wallpaper because she is confined by her husband’s treatment. When John stripped her of the opportunity to write, Jane was forced to find a new way to engage her mind and express herself. Jane wants to keep this new found way of expressing herself out of the hands of her husband and his sister, Jennie. Gilman writes, “I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly o the most innocent excuses and I’ve caught him several times looking at the wallpaper! And Jennie too. […] I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 615). Jane slowly comes to the realization that there is not only a pattern within the wallpaper, but also a woman trapped behind it. Rula comments on the woman within the wallpaper and how it affects…

    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, symbolism is well presented throughout the story because the narrator feels due to her nervous illness she is trapped in “yellow wallpaper” though the wallpaper is really stands for her being caged by surroundings. The wallpaper is a horrid unclean, almost revolting color as observed by the narrator it is also “strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is dull yet lurid orange is some places. A sickly sulphur tint in others (Gilman 87).” The most terrible thing is that there is a shapeless pattern that fascinates her and intrigues her for hours to figure out how it is patterned. The narrator stares in the moonlight and sees a desperate women crawling and creeping, in…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Short story paper outline Introduction (Feminist literature) Topic Sentence – Gilman’s main purpose for writing the yellow wallpaper is to convey the relationship between a husband/wife in the 19th century. General Exposition – Throughout the story we shift back and forth through the narrator’s consciousness and real life situations. Narrow the Focus – My main focus is the wallpaper in “The yellow wallpaper” which basically represent the narrator’s growing repression. I also tend to focus on the Imagery, and characteristics of the story.…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman, an important symbol is the Yellow Wallpaper, which represents the unknown woman’s illness and life. Throughout the story as the woman’s mental health gets worse, the wallpaper pattern gets more unbearable. She becomes obsessed with the atrocious pattern, and repulsing color. When the narrator and her husband arrive at the mansion, she knows she is depressed but nothing too serious. And when she first sees the wallpaper, she thinks it’s disturbing, but she can handle it. The narrator says, “ It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.” The narrator is using personification to express how the wallpaper is almost abusing her and how she has no control over it.…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The significance of the woman in the yellow wallpaper it that she is the one telling the story to the readers, so they are able to see the wallpaper from her perspective.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman defies gender roles in the nineteenth century, by using the main character to show women need a creative outlet, to work, and not conform to the idealistic type of woman in the nineteenth century. She also shows this story is not specifically about one family by using generic names such as John and Mary (Ford 309). The use of these unspecific names suggests that Gilman is using the story to encompass all women and not just the main character of the story that is undergoing these persecutions (Ford 309). Throughout the story, the main character is trapped in a room with horrid yellow wallpaper. that her husband said he would change it out when they first rented the house, but now has no intention to. He believes that living with something she isn’t fond of will do her some good in recovery (Gilman “Yellow” 794). At first the yellow wallpaper has little meaning other than the fact that the main character hates it and almost refuses to…

    • 1964 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator reflects herself with the woman in the wallpaper who was as confined as she also was. The protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper is the best example in order to understand the self-oppression and oppression by men that women experienced in the late eighteen hundreds.…

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" begins with the arrival of narrator, her husband John, their new born baby, and her sister-in-law to summer house which John have rented. The narrator is suffering from post-partum depression, and the summer house will serve, according to her husband, as a place for her to get better.…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The yellow wallpaper can be considered as a symbol of oppression of women. After the birth of her child, the protagonist is victim to post partum depression. In order to “cure” her, her husband, John confines her to a room with yellow wallpaper. John bans her from her pleasures such as writing as he believes that any simple task would limit her recovery.…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It is a bit ironic that the author chose a color so bright and usually defined as being a happy and joyful color. However, this story is not at all joyful, but is instead is very depressing and sad. The wallpaper is described in such great detail that it is very easy for the reader to picture exactly what the author is trying to say. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study…” within this description of the the wallpaper it is obvious that the narrator is unhappy with the wallpaper and as the story goes on the wallpaper begins to play a vital role in her psychological deterioration (156). The wallpaper appears to be a border that keeps the women trapped within the shadows of the men. As the narrator begins to rip the paper off this is the symbol of freedom and the struggle to be release from the constant stereotypes and gender differences. It is interesting to see that even though the wallpaper was what was causing the narrator to deteriorate at the end of the story, the wallpaper is what finally frees…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is within the wallpaper that the narrator finds her hidden self and her eventual freedom. Her obsession with the paper begins subtly and then consumes both the narrator and the story. Once settled in the gothic setting, the narrator is dismayed to learn that her husband has chosen the top-floor nursery room for her. The room is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper, the design of which “commits every artistic sin”. The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she begins to see more than just the outer design. At first she sees “bulbous eyes” and “absurd unblinking eyes . . . everywhere”. The wallpaper consumes the narrator offering up more intricate images as time passes. She first notices a different colored sub-pattern of a figure beneath the top design. This figure is eventually seen as a woman who “creeps” and shakes the outer pattern, now seen as bars. This woman-figure becomes essentially the narrator’s doppelganger or double trapped behind the bars of her role in…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper is a story which is told in the first individual by the Narrator, a young lady. The Narrator and her husband, John, have leased a substantial, empty colonial estate for the midyear. The Narrator portrays the home as haunted, or possibly feeling extremely odd, and relates that her husband John, a refined physician laughs at her notions. The Narrator, on the other hand, furtively wants to stimulate the thought that the house is haunted. The Narrator is experiencing anxious misery and furtively accepts that on the off chance that her husband was not a doctor she may recoup all the more rapidly. Notwithstanding, both John and the Narrator's sibling, additionally an expert physician, have advised her that she is fit as a fiddle…

    • 2713 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays