"The Yellow Wallpaper" By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

          In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” John's wife was struggling to free herself from her isolated and confined way of life. John was a physician and didn't want his wife to work at all until she was better, yet he didn't believe that she was truly sick. She disagreed with his course of action, but went along with it anyway. They relocated to a colonial mansion for the summer in hopes to help her overcome her nervous depression. She was confined for most of the summer in an airy room that had been covered with wallpaper that was old, faded yellow, ripped, and lacked any distinct pattern. She had begged her husband to be taken to another room in the house, for she could not stand the wallpaper. He had not allowed her to move out the room. He then told her it would be good for her condition. She had a very creative imagination and loved to write, but her husband deemed these qualities as unhealthy for her. The wife said one day about the wallpaper, “ I wish I could get well faster. But I must not think about that. This paper looks at me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had on me”(269). She was beginning to see the wallpaper as something other than what it truly was. It's as thought she was making a connection with it. She had the ability to create something out of nothing. “I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store”(269). I began to understand the depth of her imagination and creativity. She had no way to express her creativity. Unfortunately, her family saw it as an illness. She was starting to see an image take form in the wallpaper, “ But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so – I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design”(270). I began to realize that the image behind the wall paper was indeed her. “ There are things in the wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will...And it is like a women stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern...The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out”(272). She noticed that the wallpaper would change depending on the time of day. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be”(273). The woman she was seeing in the pattern of the wallpaper was herself. It's not until the end of the story that she realized that the woman in the wallpaper was indeed her. “ “ I've got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!””(278). She inevitably became insane because she was isolated, put on bed rest, and was unable to utilize her creativity. I believe the wallpaper symbolized the imprisonment her imagination and creativity.