In Charlotte Perkins Gilmans short story The Yellow Wallpaper she uses the grotesque yellow wallpaper to symbolize the society barriers that women experienced during the 1800s. Throughout the story Gilman provides a lot of detail about the wallpaper the narrator is forced to look at everyday. She helps the reader understand that her views are shared in upper class society because the wallpaper is found in a very grand and beautiful home.
Very quickly in the story she gives her husband importance in society by being a physician. Men were viewed as having a higher level in society especially those who were educated. It appears that the narrator was raised with that philosophy as she references her brother being a physician as well, indicating to the reader that she is very familiar to this because this is the lifestyle she grew up knowing. During the 1800s, women did not have much say in society, just as she did not have any say in what room she would be living in when they moved into their new house or what medicines she was taking for her illness.
The room that her husband chooses for their room has barriers everywhere she turns. Every window in her room has bars on them; the bed is immoveable and nailed to the floor. She wants to move the bed so the moonlight during the night does not bother her. In the entrance to their room is a big door that is hard for her to open and close so she leaves opening and closing the door to John because she depends on him so much. Every one of the barriers is an example to what women feel like in society, and depend on men to do everything.
As she describes the wallpaper to the reader, she gives great detail to the patterns that she sees. The designs are very repetitive, there are no breaks in the pattern, yet she looks all day for a break. This symbolizes the break that she is looking for in her life and in her own marriage to be able to escape the things she does not want to be associated with. No matter how long and how many times she stares at the wallpaper she is unable to find a flaw in it. As she focuses on the wallpaper all day she thinks she sees a pattern like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside and down (Gilman 611). Later on in the story the images start to become clearer she says it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern (Gilman 614). Towards the end of the story she says, sometimes I think there are a great many of women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it all over (Gilman 616). This could symbolize that at first when she sees just eyes in the wallpaper. She believes that people are watching her in the situation of not being able to be her own person and do what she wants to do instead of being told; then she realizes that she not the only woman in that situation, yet most of the time she feels alone and that no one is there to help her out. Gretchen Greene points out Gilmans own life by stating this, Specifically, Gilman and the narrator are trying to escape the function society has placed on them (Greene Web).
As the days, weeks, and months progress she finds herself being annoyed by the wallpaper and trying to figure out what exactly was behind the paper. She becomes consumed and obsessed with the paper and can do nothing else without thinking about it. She and the woman behind the paper begin to fight and rip the wallpaper to shreds during the night. This represents the fight that she is in to break free of the barriers she feels trapped behind. When it is time to leave and move away from the house she does not want to leave. The only thing she can think about is the wallpaper and breaking free from her old trapped self. When she is finally released from the paper she locks herself in the room and creeps around like she saw the other women doing before. This suggests that she is realizing what has her trapped and is now free of what were once the barriers in her life. She represents this by saying, Ive got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane. And Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back (Gilman 619). Jeanette King also represents this by saying, The creeping figure behind the paper trying to break through is the narratorss double, and, as the narrators anger and hostility towards her husband gradually surface the text, so she assists the double to break free from the forms that confine her (King Web).
The details that Gilman portrays about the wallpaper tell the reader that the narrator became so consumed with the wallpaper that she drove herself insane. She was determined to get her mind off of her sickness and become healthy again that she sat in her room with no company and obsessed over the paper. In Gilmans real life she used writing to fill her emptiness through her depressed states of being in society during earlier times; when men were looked upon to fend for the family and basically run womens lives.
Works Cited
Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays. The Yellow Wallpaper. The Norton Introduction to
Literature. 2010.
Mukhtar, Omar. The Yellow Wallpaper. Medical Classics: BMJ. 2011. Web.
King, Jeannette, and Pam Morris. On Not Reading Between the Lines: Models of Reading in The Yellow Wallpaper. EBSCOhost. Winter 1989. Web.
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