The yellow wallpaper In the story, wallpaper, a usually feminine, floral decoration on the interior of walls, is a symbol of female imprisonment within the domestic sphere. Over the course of the story, the wallpaper becomes a text of sorts through which the narrator exercises her literary imagination and identifies with a feminist double figure. When John curbs her creativity and writing, the narrator takes it upon herself to make some sense of the wallpaper. She reverses her initial feeling of being watched by the wallpaper and starts actively studying and decoding its meaning. She untangles its chaotic pattern and locates the figure of a woman struggling to break free from the bars in the pattern.
After staring at the wallpaper long enough, she finds that the pattern moves because of the woman behind it trying to get out. She describes the woman as “all the time trying to climb out. But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so” (353). This is another reference to how the lives of women are restricting. The barred windows represents the world of possibilities, but the narrator says, “I don't like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women and they creep so fast”(353), because of how the women must “creep” around without being seen or
Her current self, that is removed from her previous, more sane state, is becoming confortable in the room and feels she can do what she wants in it, however her recollection which still hangs with her drives her to feel the need to rip down the yellow wallpaper. This wallpaper which she feels symbolizes her prison when she was first shut off in the room, hypothetically imprisoning her former self. I really have discovered something at last.Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, Ihave finally found out.The front pattern DOES move--and no wonder! The
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is driven by the narrator’s sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage.
The workers speak of her, basically, as Curley’s problem that needs to stay at home away from the other workers. She opens herself up to Crooks and Lennie because they possess equal amounts of powerlessness as she does. Curley’s wife feeds off of character’s insecurities, so she can strengthen herself against harm. At the end Curley’s wife’s powerlessness shows greatly when she is strangled at the hands of Lennie who she tries to seduce. This just shows how women then were little to any powerful.
In Jacobean times women were seen as inferior and even in the Victoria era, thus she required external forces to crush her conscience to allow her to fulfil her ambition. Yet she is afraid her feminine qualities will prevent her from achieving the murder of King Duncan. Which would gradually lead to her mental breakdown. Regicide was considered a mortal sin in Jacobean times, one God couldn't forgive. Whereas Browning’s protagonist in The Laboratory sustains her feminine qualities this is reflected in the line “The colours too grim” in which she is referring to her dislike of the colour of poison and that it needs to be 'brightened' up in order to convince her victim to drink it.
In the prison drama, 'The Shawshank Redemption' directed by Frank Darabont, there were many important visual symbols which helped develop various ideas in the film. The posters were an important symbol which helped develop the ideas of freedom and secrets relating to Andy. Andy hides one of his deepest secrets behind a poster in his cell; a tunnel which eventually leads him to freedom into the world outside of Shawshank. Another important visual was the bible as it helped develop the ideas of hope and religion mainly between Andy and the Warden of Shawshank prison. The visual symbol of the harmonica symbolises the ideas of the hope and freedom the main character- Andy had in music.
She continues to say "the windows are barred" (Gilman 834) to describe the prison like quality of her surroundings showing the confinement of both her physical and mental being. As a feminist writer, Gilman uses her supposedly mad character
Gilman uses symbols to explain the how women are trapped in domestic life. The symbol that Gilman uses the yellow wallpaper in the room she is confined in. At first, the wallpaper is just awful as she says “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow.” She is disgusted by it and understands why children, who have been in this room, would want to tear it down. Then, the wallpaper becomes a point of curiosity as she wants to discover the organization of the pattern. She said, “...and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion,” as if the wallpaper was made with symmetry in mind.
The wallpaper is used characterically to reflect the marriage the narrator finds herself ambushed inside. At the start of the short story, the wallpaper is merely seen as an aberrant bore, but as the narrative progresses, the wallpaper becomes much more baleful and frightening. As a site of symbolism, the symbol has three functions in Charlotte Perkins Gilman s ’, “The Yellow Wallpaper”: it reveals the wallpaper including the imagery, imprisonment and symbolism. The imagery of the wallpaper in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” transitions as the short story is developed in order to emulate the increasing realization of the monopoly the narrator’s marriage has upon herself. The very first descriptions illustrate her initial animus by describing it as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Perkins 41-42).