The yellow wallpaper The Yellow Wall-Paper,” by Charlotte Gilman Perkins, can be read as a simple story of a young woman suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband is unsympathetic to her needs, her doctor refuses to acknowledge her serious illness, and her emotional state declines as a result of being forced to stay inside her room in the middle of her vacation with no company except the yellow wallpaper. But, on a deeper level, it is this room and the wallpaper that is pasted all over it that is symbolic and allows the narrator to materialize her depression and slowly decline into insanity. In the beginning of the story, the narrator describes herself as having “temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency.” (169) The narrator is well aware of her condition, and it is apparent that she is also aware of what her condition may lead to. But, if it weren’t for certain imprisoning aspects of her environment, her condition might have never progressed to complete insanity. For example, the windows of the narrator’s room become a materialization of the world that squeezes her into the tiny jail of her own mind, and the wallpaper represents this state of that mind. The room was once used as a nursery, and thus its environment makes the narrator feel like a child, like a being who is taken less seriously than she should be. She is in a room where “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” (170) The protective bars on the windows are symbolic of the
protectiveness of her husband, John, and his well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful suggestions. The narrator is a prisoner in her place of rest, and her husband is but the jailer, watching over her when he sees fit and leaving her in the house with his sister, who serves as a sort of nanny for his restless wife in the stuffy nursery. Other aspects of the room are symbolic and allow the narrator to feel even more trapped inside of her depression. The bedstead that is nailed down to the floor serves as a symbol for the lack of sexuality and sensuality ...
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protectiveness of her husband, John, and his well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful suggestions. The narrator is a prisoner in her place of rest, and her husband is but the jailer, watching over her when he sees fit and leaving her in the house with his sister, who serves as a sort of nanny for his restless wife in the stuffy nursery. Other aspects of the room are symbolic and allow the narrator to feel even more trapped inside of her depression. The bedstead that is nailed down to the floor serves as a symbol for the lack of sexuality and sensuality that the narrator experiences in her temporary home. She is given the “rest cure” by her husband and doctor, which forbids her to work until she is “well” again. In this way, she is bedridden from her “disease” and kept out of the way. Never does her husband attempt to be physically affectionate with her, and this lack of physicality for a woman as sensitive as herself may cause a certain degeneration of self-understanding. The fact that the narrator has no access to her offspring is also liable to effect her in negative ways. “The immovable bedstead symbolizes the static nature of both the expression and the product of her sexuality,” (Golden 138) and this feeling of stagnation that comes from the nailed and confined bedstead is symbolic for the emotional and physical malnutrition of the narrator. The view provided by the placement of her room of rest is a symbolic influence for the narrator, for she looks out the window and sees a world in which she cannot live because of her husband. But, in her heart of hearts, she wishes to live in this free and open world, away from oppression and misunderstanding. Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. (171) It is this vision of people, this hope of other life existing around her, that drives the narrator to see a woman in the wallpaper of her room. She recreates the design of the “gnarly tress” and “numerous paths” in the designs of the wallpaper, and the woman imagined in the wallpaper is at first just one of these people on one of the paths, enjoying life and freedom. This view from her “prison” window is also symbolic of the rebellious feelings of the narrator towards her husband. He warns her to keep herself together and will herself away from her overactive imagination, and she in turn defies him in the most obvious way: the narrator envelopes her fantasies and hands herself over to insanity. The wallpaper itself is perhaps the largest symbol in Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The descriptions of the paper provided by the narrator show all the loathing and disgust she feels for herself manifested into an inanimate object that becomes animated in her mind. The narrator describes the color as “a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.” (170) Words such as “dull” and “lurid” have opposite meanings, and they prove the narrator’s indecision and struggle to understand herself. According to the dictionary, the word “dull” means “intellectually weak or obtuse; stupid; lacking responsiveness or alertness; not bright or vivid.” (“Dull”) Alternately, the word “lurid” means “glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism.” (“Lurid”) These two words describe the narrator very specifically. She feels that her senses have been dulled by the oppression of her husband, the room she is in, and her depression, and yet her actions and imagination are so fierce and vivid that she becomes two different people: a subdued, frail flower in the daytime and a creature of passion in the night. These changes are often sparked and manifested through the wallpaper. The wallpaper and the woman that the narrator finds in the pattern become more and more prominent as the narrator gets stronger urges to escape her mental and physical confinement. In this respect, the wallpaper becomes symbolic of the narrators “desire to escape from the limitations of her husbands expectations.” (Golden 139) As the story progresses the narrator increasingly identifies with the imagined captive woman until she believes that she is the captive woman who has escaped. “‘I’m out at last,’ said I, ‘In spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’” (181) The narrator created the woman in the wallpaper and slowly began to transform herself into this woman. The wallpaper figment crept in the daylight, and the narrator followed her, but she locked her door because “it must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!” (178) The woman in the wallpaper symbolized the narrator and her fight to break out of the confines of her life and the room she was forced to stay in. In the end of the story, the narrator tears the wallpaper off of the walls as a final act of defiance. Throughout the story, the narrator seeks for a way out of the house, out of her monotonous daily lifestyle. But, alternately, she escapes her depression by entering insanity, a state of mind where she no longer understands what depression is or feels any of its effects. Towards the end, the narrator feels that she is cured of her troubles. She says, “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” (180) She believes that by locking herself in her symbolic physical prison and tearing off the wall-paper that is symbolic of her mental state, she is releasing herself from all of the expectations of her husband and all the depression she felt throughout the story. The narrator’s physical environment and the symbolism it contained allowed her to materialize her depression and descend into insanity. It is clear that it is possible to view the wallpaper as a reflection of the narrators state of mind and the fact that she took on the character of the woman in the wallpaper to allow herself to break free of the ties that bound her. The confinement of the barred room and the disturbingly vivid wallpaper proved not only to be complimentary to the story, but also to foreshadow the narrator’s escape from depression into a new sphere of insanity.
