The Psychological Symbol of “The Yellow Wallpaper”

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story based in the
nineteenth century, told by an anonymous narrator who represents the effects of the
oppression of women in society. The wallpaper is the dreadful, significant symbol that the
narrator finds repulsive in the story. She quotes, “I never saw a worse [wall]paper in my
life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull
enough to confuse the eye…, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study,
and when you follow the lame uncertain curves…they suddenly commit suicide…."
(Gilman 146). The use of the complex symbols in the story such as the house, the window,
and the wallpaper help to ease her tyranny as well as her self-expression. Many ideas and
conditions are represented in the yellow wallpaper and among them, a distraction that
becomes an obsession, a true sense of entrapment, and every notion of creativity gone
astray.
The references to the yellow wallpaper become more frequent as they develop over the
course of the story. The wallpaper serves as an adequate symbol that represents the
woman’s confinement and her emotional condition. "The pattern is torturing. You think
you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a
back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples
upon you" (Gilman 150). Of the many symbols used, it is strange that Gilman made the
house a symbol of evil. The house is clearly not the narrator’s own and she expresses her
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