Symbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses setting and symbolism in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to portray the toxic social standards placed on women in the late nineteenth century and the growing awareness of women’s rights through the story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression who eventually loses her sanity. Gilman utilizes symbolism, such as the wallpaper and the narrator’s husband being a physician, which shed light on the social restrictions women had. At the beginning of the story, the narrator mentions how her husband “John is a physician” who “does not believe [the narrator] [is] sick” (pg. 1). The adage of the adage. Although the narrator’s husband does not have bad intentions toward his wife, the “resting cure” he imposes, where the narrator is “absolutely forbidden to “work” until [she is] well again,” actually backfires and leads to the narrator’s insanity.
On page 8, the husband acts ignorant, stating that he is a doctor and can tell that the narrator is “gaining flesh” when the narrator herself claims she does not “weigh a bit more.” The husband’s dismissal of his wife’s opinions and treating her like a child symbolizes the high-class men who were considered family leaders. The author may have intentionally chosen the narrator’s husband to be a physician to symbolize the great power men in higher classes had, especially over women. The narrator's growing obsession with the yellow wallpaper leads to her descent into madness. The narrator claims that “there are a great many women behind” the wallpaper, which has “bars” on it that “nobody could climb through” as it “strangles them off”. 11, 9).