Summary: The Symbolic Meaning Of The Yellow Wallpaper
The symbolic meaning of the Wallpaper Throughout the short story The yellow Wallpaper the idea of the wallpaper is brought up again and again. The women that is seen in the wallpaper is representative of John's wife. She feels that she is trapped in her marriage with John and has no way of getting out of it. The yellow stain wallpaper representative of her beliefs that the traditions of marriage and family are tainted and wrong. It was not until the very last scene in which the narrator finally discovered that eh woman trapped wit in the wallpaper was a symbolic representation of herself. It was final said in the line “I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder
if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” It was at this point that she also seems to have made a connection to all women, not just herself. She herself feels trapped in her marriage, but when she says “...there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast” she is referring to many women who are also married, that they too may be trapped behind the wallpaper bars of marriage. A little bit before this in the story, she makes some symbolic references to her struggle with her problems with marriage. The narrator said a couple pages before said “Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.” I believe this is representative of her struggle and the struggle of other women like her. When she says the woman stands still in the light, I think she is talking about how women pretend to be okay with marriage in public and to other people. On the contrary, when she says the woman in shady spots shakes the bar, it represents how she and other women are secretly resisting the ideas of traditional marriage and how it is holding them back like a prison. There are many other lines about the wallpaper that expouse some part of the symbolic meaning of the wallpaper. These were a few that stuck out to me as important to the overall meaning. Through her experience, she also begins to expand her thinking that this is not just her own problem but one for most women. This is the overall meaning of this short story.
if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” It was at this point that she also seems to have made a connection to all women, not just herself. She herself feels trapped in her marriage, but when she says “...there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast” she is referring to many women who are also married, that they too may be trapped behind the wallpaper bars of marriage. A little bit before this in the story, she makes some symbolic references to her struggle with her problems with marriage. The narrator said a couple pages before said “Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.” I believe this is representative of her struggle and the struggle of other women like her. When she says the woman stands still in the light, I think she is talking about how women pretend to be okay with marriage in public and to other people. On the contrary, when she says the woman in shady spots shakes the bar, it represents how she and other women are secretly resisting the ideas of traditional marriage and how it is holding them back like a prison. There are many other lines about the wallpaper that expouse some part of the symbolic meaning of the wallpaper. These were a few that stuck out to me as important to the overall meaning. Through her experience, she also begins to expand her thinking that this is not just her own problem but one for most women. This is the overall meaning of this short story.