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How Does Charlotte Perkins Use Of Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

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How Does Charlotte Perkins Use Of Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper
“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins, tells a story of a woman who is oppressed through her marriage in the early 19th century. In this time period when a woman married, legally her husband owned everything she had. The protagonist represents the oppression and frustration that women went through in society. Perkins use of symbolism adds to the reality of the wife’s oppression that slowly progresses into insanity. The subordinate position the wife is in because of her overpowering husband is created by the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, secret diary, and the woman inside the wallpaper.
The yellow wallpaper, being one of the largest symbols in the story, sheds light on how men overpower women. The color yellow on the wallpaper exemplifies the treatment that the main character goes through. The wallpaper has an underlying message that the color yellow shows weakness and sickness. The wife in this case is surrounded by the color yellow and is weighed down …show more content…
The dull yellow wallpaper is linked to the narrator which implies that she is yellow and her sanity is being faded away. Her husband condemns her to the room and because of this she is losing self-control. The diary was one last hope of her gaining some type of authority for herself. She wanted to get well and made numerous suggestions to her husband, but he turned them all down. Once her husband took that privilege away too, her illness has an extreme downward spiral. The figure of the woman trapped inside the wall was a sign of the wife’s sanity being lost forever, but insanity made her gain freedom. Because of this, the wife could finally do as she pleased. Insanity broke the chain of oppression, in spite of everything she went
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