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The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Essay

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Symbolism has a very effective meaning in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper short story. Symbolism is defined as “the practice of representing things by symbols, or investing things with a symbolic meaning or character” (Dictionary.com). Firstly, the wallpaper symbolizes a variety of the narrator’s senses. Throughout the story, her senses change and the wallpaper also changes. The wallpaper shows how someone who suffers from a mental illness has different perspectives on their emotional surroundings and self-perception. Next, the house the narrator is kept in and the ugliness in the patterns of the wallpaper help represent the outlook of a woman’s repression. All in all, the wallpaper symbolizes the events in which the narrator finds herself trapped …show more content…
The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is controlled by her husband, who also happens to be a doctor. Being diagnosed with mental illness, she experiences severe oppression forced by others around her. The narrator in this story symbolizes all women that are repressed by dominating men in society. The effect symbolism has on this motif is conveyed by the windows, the house, and the foreign wallpaper the author uses for the narrator’s self-expression. The house is used to symbolize safety and a home to the narrator, however it is also used to represent the exact opposite. She feels that she does not want to be in the house, and that it is haunted. She describes the house as being a “colonial mansion…a haunted house” (Gilman 83). Living in the house is her husband’s idea and she tells him she wants to leave because she does not feel comfortable there. The house and the windows causes the narrator to feel trapped. On the other hand, it is the only place she can freely express herself and her thoughts through her writing. Slyly, the narrator writes when nobody is around and obediently hides her journal as soon as her husband arrives home, which is often very late. Although the house provides a sense of safety and openness for her, it also creates a feeling of being trapped and oppressed. These symbols create a depiction of the narrator’s insecurities and securities as she suffers the consequences of her mental illness influenced by her

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