Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a fictional narrative detailing a woman’s subsequent stay in a house that her husband, John Doe, had rented out for the summer. She is diagnosed with a “temporary nervous depression” by her husband who is introduced to the reader as a physician and does not believe that her condition is legitimate. The narrator’s hysteria worsens as the story progresses in a horrific manner, bringing to life the yellow wallpaper that is layered on the walls of the room in which she is entrapped. Substantially, the tension between the narrator and the wallpaper not only represents an internal conflict but also bridges a connection between the symbols that arise from the wallpaper itself. These symbols are …show more content…
Towards the beginning of the story, she is described as a mere shadow that is “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” (Gilman, 661) in places where the sun shines. As the story progresses, so does the clarity of the woman’s identity as “the dim shapes get clearer every day” (Gilman, 663), and it comes to a point where she gains more than just the ability to creep, such as being able to crawl in between the patterned lines and shake the bars. Towards the end of the story, the woman becomes more visible as she is seen creeping around in the garden and finally becomes tangible to the narrator when they attempt to peel off the wallpaper together. The woman’s steady manifestation and formation behind the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator herself, seen conclusively when the narrator also begins to creep around the room like the woman and, eventually, over her unconscious husband. The two become one figure as she tears down the wallpaper and continues to creep as if she had helped herself escape. Just as how the woman’s identity had been ambiguous in the beginning, it was, conjointly, the starting point pf the narrator’s realization about her husband’s oppressive orders. In the same progression, both her identity and understanding come together in tangibility about the overall situation of her disorder and marriage. She, the woman, breaks free from the yellow …show more content…
Because the narrator is a woman that appears weak and fragile to her husband, she is treated like a child and is not allowed to speak her mind on the adversity that she faces even when the experiences are most well-known to her. This shows that a man can assume dominance over his wife’s thoughts and feelings despite his misunderstanding of them because he believes that it is best for their marriage. An oppressive marriage, as shown in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” touches upon intersectionality as it reaches out to women who are discriminated by their roles in society. Due to this unjust dominance, the identity of the wives within these types of marriages are erased and instead, replaced by a man’s opinion. The symbols utilized throughout the story play a crucial role in reflecting the need for intersectional feminism in a male-dominated society. The wallpaper’s pattern reflects the oppression itself and the woman creeping behind the pattern reflects a greater need for individuality among women in
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