Themes & Symbols

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow wallpaper is a story about this woman who is suffering through depression. In the story she spends all of her at her summer home with her husband John. Her husband Johns tries to help cure her by locking her in this room. She spends everyday there and the only thing that she can do is look at the yellow wallpaper. She also notices that most of the wallpaper is torn up, and the floor is also ruined. To keep herself entertained, she stares at the wallpaper look for patterns. She notices and looks for patterns. One thing that she always finds is a woman in the wallpaper, and she is trapped behind the patterns, and trying to get out. She then gets a journal to write down her thoughts and the patterns that she finds, she would also sometime refer back to her childhood. From preventing John finding this journal she would hide it. Later on her interest for the wallpaper grow, and she spends less, and less time sleeping. She starts to refer to the woman in the pattern again, and she was noticing strange things. She said that she could smell the wallpaper throughout the house, even when she was outside. As the story begins to end she notices that the woman in the wallpaper is trying to get out, and she later escape briefly, and she tries to but an end to this. The nest night and day she tries to free the woman by ripping off the wallpaper. And then at the end she realizes that she is the woman in the wallpaper.

Themes

The main theme about this story is depression. In this story the woman has been suffering through depression for a while now in the early 20^th century, and she isn’t getting any help for it. She suffers from it everyday, and her husband pays little attention to her. The only thing that she can do is look at the wallpaper. That occupies most of her days, and that is the only thing that keeps her sane. Her husband does not know what to do about it, and he thinks locking her up in a room is suppose to help her. Eventually her condition gets worse and worse. She starts to notice a woman in the patterns of the wallpaper, who is trapped behind the pattern like bars. She would them realize that the woman needed to be free, and she was going to help. So she tears off the wallpaper, and that when she realize that the woman in the wallpaper was herself.

Another theme about this story is the lack of attention, and help that people get when they suffer through depression at this time. Her husband john believed that locking her his this room, isolated from the world would help her. They don’t socialize with her, and they do don’t let her out of the room. The only thing that she could do was stare at the wallpaper looking for patterns, which would eventually making her insane. She is basically begin treated as a second-class citizen.

Symbols

The 2 most key symbols in the story is the woman in the wallpaper, and the wallpaper itself. The woman in the wallpaper symbolizes herself, and the reason is because the woman in the wallpaper is trapped, and she can’t get our. The narrator says the she is also trapped behind the patterns, and that she is suffering. Then when she rips off the wallpaper, and she notices that the person inside was she all along.

The wallpaper itself is also a symbol because it symbolizes how she is locked up, and the she is getting very little attention. Since she spends everyday trying to solve the pattern, it basically symbolizes that she is trapped inside, and she can’t come out. It is something that haunts her everyday, and there is nothing that she can do about it. She also then refers to the woman that she sees. The woman is just like her, locked up behind bars and trying to get out.