Symbols in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is replete with symbols. The story offers an account of
a married woman driven to madness because of the Victorian “rest-cure” administered to remove her
postpartum depression. The relationship of the narrator with the yellow wallpaper in the story turns out to be
traumatic as well as cathartic. The most obvious motif in the story is the wallpaper, it takes centre stage and
could even be described as a character in itself. Its importance lies in its symbolism as it represents the society
of the time, the narrator’s desire for creative expression and her obsession.

The “repellent yellow wallpaper” is symbolic of this repressive society. The creeping woman who
eventually finds her way out of the paper, is symbolic of the narrator in the story finally breaking free from
the constraints of society. The narrator’s madness is the only option for her to find freedom: “The colour is
repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.” The narrator of ‘The Yellow
Wallpaper’ is a writer, but when John, her husband, restricts her creative outlet by forcing her to stop writing
in her journal, she must find some other way of expressing herself. The wallpaper becomes this outlet and
eventual obsession, she finds herself tracing the pattern in the paper for hours, determined to come to some
kind of “conclusion.” The wallpaper gradually consumes the narrator’s being, offering up more complex
images as time passes. She first notices a different coloured sub-pattern of a figure beneath the “front design.”
This figure is eventually seen as a woman who “creeps” and shakes the outer pattern, now seen to the narrator
as bars. Gary Scharnhorst says that this woman-figure becomes essentially the narrator’s “doppelganger,” or
double, trapped behind the bars of her role in the patriarchy. As the story progresses, the narrator identifies
more and more with the figure in the wallpaper, until (in one of the most controversial statements in the entire
text) she refers to herself in the third person. In this statement the narrator says, “‘I’ve got out at last,’ said
I, ‘in spite of you and Jane.’”

The house is a typical motif of the gothic genre, symbolising terror and darkness and is used to aid the
reader into these feelings of tension and discomfort. The second sentence in the story describes the house as,
“A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house.” By beginning the story in this
way, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is foreshadowing the events to come, as the reader will discover that the house
is in a way haunted by the woman in the paper, even if it is a figment of the narrator’s invention. This is only
further emphasised when the narrator expresses her disgust for the room: “I don't like our room a bit. I
wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty
old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.”

The narrator’s baby is only mentioned in the story twice, and only as passing comments. The baby is
also only ever referred to as ‘the baby,’ he or she is never given a name. This is intentionally done as it serves
to highlight the issues the narrator has with the feminine role, as well as suggest that the mental illness that
the narrator suffers from is postnatal depression: “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a
dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.”

The first-person perspective of the novella mimics that of a journal, the reader can get a personal view
of the narrator as it is as though the reader is intruding on her personal thoughts and feelings. For instance,
towards the end of the story she writes, “And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her!” The use of
“privately” suggests that the narrator believes that she is having a private conversation with someone,
imagining that the paper is an actual person. This is evidently due to her madness and is an indication of her
loneliness. The journal acts as somebody that the narrator can confide in as she does not have anybody else to
talk to, or anybody else to listen to her.

Thus, the story is replete with powerful symbols and images that offer a creative outlet to Gilman’s
story.