The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The short story speaks of a young mother (narrator) who is suffering with post-partum depression and is given the treatment of “rest cure” by her over controlling husband/physician. The narrator is kept in a nursery with yellow wallpaper in the couple’s summer home. As the story progresses the narrator becomes immensely intrigued by the patterns in the yellow wallpaper. The narrator begins to pick and scratch at the wallpaper because she sees a women behind it, a women trapped in the patterns. The narrator becomes so obsessed with the wallpaper she loses complete touch of reality itself. The woman trapped behind the wallpaper represents the narrator. The narrator

The struggle being female oppression and women not acting upon the fact they are being treated unfairly. Some of the symbolism MacPike scoped out of the short story, she displayed in her article, Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in “The Yellow Wallpaper” the symbols being the nursery, nailed bedstead, and barred windows. The nursery symbolizes the narrator being trapped in childhood, since she is not allowed to make any of her own decisions. The barred windows symbolize the narrator’s lack of mobility since she is unable to break free from her husband’s rules and must stay in that nursery, trapped. Lastly the nailed bedstead symbolizes the narrator’s inability to express her sexuality and her ability to act like a woman. She is even not allowed to care for her infant, she is rid of all outlets to express her womanhood and there is nothing she can do about it. Other writers have noted the symbolism behind the sunlight and the moonlight in the short story (davidpublishing). The sunlight represents a time when women must attend to the house and women fall under the control of their husband’s. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator did just that, she obeyed her husband’s rules when the sun came up. The moonlight represented a time when the narrator would burst with activity and would rip scratch the wallpaper. This was a time when the narrator disregarded all of her husband’s orders and did as she pleased. These are a few examples of symbolism in the “The Yellow Wallpaper” that show the female