preview

What Does The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolize

Decent Essays

In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author portrays a story of a woman who is undergoing a horrific disease in the late eighteen hundreds. She is showing clear signs of what we would call depression today. Although Charlotte Perkins Gilman does explain a character undergoing this horrible disease, in this time frame, depression was unthought-of. Everyone believed there was nothing wrong with her. In fact, her husband even believed she was full of non-sense. Throughout this short story there is a great amount of symbolisms that can be depicted. The Yellow Wallpaper itself is a very significant symbol for the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Also, the barred windows that are explicitly explained in this story have great symbolism. The colors, the images and the impactful imagination that is seen by the narrator truly represents the symbolism can be brought to life for one reading this short story. …show more content…

It has so much meaning. The angles, colors and images that the narrator found throughout the story clearly shows how contradictory the wallpaper is. There is not consistency within the patterns and angles of the wallpaper. This symbolizes the narrator’s emotions throughout the story. She is inconsistent and contradictory in her emotions. She was so fascinated with the wallpaper becoming almost obsessed. As she does study the paper more and become more obsessed with it, she becomes more unstable. At the end of the story when the narrator tears down this paper, it is continued to be significantly symbolic because the wife is attempting the find the woman amongst the paper that she see. This symbolizes her trying to find her on sanity. Overall, the yellow wallpaper was a very important symbol throughout “The Yellow

Get Access