The Wallpaper
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is driven by the narrator’s sense that the
wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that
affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism
throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped,
soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” The worst part is the ostensibly formless
pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it
is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly
sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light.
Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman,
constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main
pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage. The narrator sees
this cage as festooned with the heads of many women, all of whom were
strangled as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the
structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds
herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully
uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that
traps so many women.
