Kirner 1 Reimar Kirner
Mike Harsh
ENG-102
14 June 2017
The Symbolic Side of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
The Yellow Wallpaper describes a young woman with the name of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman who back in the 80's struggles a lot in her life. While in her twenties, Gilman gives birth
to a daughter. It was after the birth of her daughter that she suffers from severe depression. The
suggestion for her cure was to do minimal physical activity, and had limited mental stimulation.
Gilman and her husband John had come to vacation in a large house for the summer after the
birth of their daughter so she can recover from her depression. Since then, her life starts to
change. Once they moved to the large house, the narrator shows that her story includes many
symbolic situations like the yellow wallpaper room, or the woman trapped in the wallpaper.
John feels that the best room for her treatment is upstairs room. The room represents an
act of symbolism for the narrator. As she describes the house, she believes that something is
wrong with the house. She says "I don’t like our room a bit." (217) With bars in the windows,
scratches on the floor, and fussy yellow wallpaper; she begins to feel that the room is alive. She
does come back to descriptions of her room and specifically the wallpaper more often. She says
"No wonder the children hated it!", "The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering
unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight." (218) She imagines designs in it,
she is trying to figure its pattern. She believes is a prison. Kirner 2 Another symbol that the narrator experiences is when John forces her to do nothing, but
lock her up in the room and rest. As a result, she starts to deteriorate. She believes she sees small
pattern behind that large yellow wallpaper; a woman trapped in front of bars. The narrator says
“Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of
the bars and shakes them hard.” (226) She watches the women shaking the bars of her prison at
night when she is locked up. She might find it a meaning to that wall and the woman behind it;
maybe it can be the narrator itself trapped in the wall. The narrator spends time trying to peel off
the wallpaper to free the woman. She begins a habit of crawling around the room. She is
convincing that she herself is a trapped woman who is ones in the wallpaper as well. She is
trying to be free.
As shown by the story, the narrator struggles the most by finding the meanings of the
room itself and the woman trapped in the wallpaper. She might think that the room describes her
personality, and the woman trapped in the wallpaper might be the narrator itself who is trapped
into her own destiny (jail).
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper” Backpack Literature: An introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, edited by X. J. Kennedy and Danna Gioia, 5th.,
Pearson, 2016, pp. 12-15.

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