What Does The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolize

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In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the wallpaper seems to symbolize the main characters illness. The main character is a woman who is suffering from what seems to be postpartum depression. She just had the baby, but seems to become depressed to the point where her sister-in-law has to take care of her baby because she cannot. The woman begins to go a little crazy, and in order to help her, her husband who is a psychiatrist puts her on what they call a rest cure. This rest cure was supposed to help her, but ended up actually making her even more insane. This woman in the story begins to become obsessed with the wallpaper the room she is being held in. She is not allowed to leave her room or really do anything, she is not even allowed to journal, which is how she relaxes and clears her mind. So, all she can do this room is look at this wallpaper all day and all night long, and think. …show more content…

This woman does not actually want to admit that there is something wrong with her, so it seems as though she is explaining how she feels through the wallpaper instead of directly saying how she is doing, and this wall paper seems to represent her state of being. She begins to not even live real life, she barely sleeps or eats anymore. We see the patterns in the wallpaper when she starts becoming ill, she mentions her paranoia with people looking at the wallpaper and touching it, as if she feels like they are prying into her own life. Jennie at one point was just looking at the paper and she gets upset with her and she says, “But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (Gilman 312) And as she gets even worse she begins to see this woman in the wallpaper. I think that this woman is her and that she is “trapped” in the “wallpaper.” She is trapped in this room, and this illness and is confused on all that is going on with

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