Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism

Peyton Durham

          The Yellow Wallpaper symbolizes the rise of women's rights.  As the story begins, the narrator and her husband travel to a vacation home in the country in hopes to isolate the narrator.  The reason for attempting to isolate the narrator was in hopes to cure her from a mental disorder.  When arriving at the house the narrator receives odd feelings about the home, almost as it was haunted.  While living in this home she was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world by her husband locking her in a room alone to "cure" her.  The narrator also feels uncomfortable in her room due to the wallpaper.  She says she can see a woman who looks like she is trapped behind this wallpaper.

          Early in the story, the author falls under the authority of her husband because during that time men were considered superior.  As the story progressed so did the narrator's condition.  She started to build up a hatred for the wallpaper, she would also see women creeping all around her home during a all hours of the day.  The narrator and her husband would discuss her disorder, but they would do so very rarely.  Her husband, John, would belittle his wife and her opinions towards her condition.  By John isolating his wife, and not acknowledging her opinions he wasn't helping to cure her, but only worsening her condition.  The reader could infer that her condition getting worse by seeing all of the new things to pop up, such as the creeping women.

Towards the end of the story the narrator had almost reached her breaking point. She was almost to the point to where she would be crazy and there would be no cure. One way the reader could see this happening is when John says, "come back to bed little girl". This angers the narrator and makes her wonder if John is actually trying to help her. Once the narrator starts to get these thoughts, she starts to doubt John, yet she still loves him. This is the time where the theme starts to come into play. Since she is starting to doubt John and his authority, she starts to build up her confidence to assert herself. One way you see her confidence is she says to John, "go back to bed little boy" as she was mocking him. By doing this she is showing that he is no longer the superior one, but she now sees herself taking over that roll. Her hatred for the wallpaper starts to become unbearable to the point where she sees it as bars holding in the woman stuck behind it. I feel that the woman behind the wallpaper is just an illusion, she is the narrator and the wallpaper is John holding her captive from the rest of the world. This illusion enrages the narrator so she attempts to rip down all the wallpaper around the room. By this time the couple are about to move back into the city, so the narrator wants to get rid of the wallpaper so nobody else has to go through what she had been through.

John comes to get his wife on moving day, he finds the door to the room where she was staying in locked. When he finally gets the key to unlock the door he finds all the wallpaper that was on the wall gone. Since the narrator viewed the wallpaper as John holding her captive, and now all that wallpaper is gone, she feels that she now is superior and doesn't need John to tell her what to do anymore. Now that she feels she can do what she wants, this means she finally has some rights, which times into the theme.