The Yellow Wallpaper And Gilmans Vital Symbolism

The Yellow Wallpaper Gilman’s Vital Symbolism â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in which she describes the treatment of a woman diagnosed with a nervous disorder by her doctor and is prescribed the â€Å"rest cure.† The story describes the submissive, childlike obedience of women to men that was considered typical at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the story, there are many symbols that highlight women’s infantilization within marriage and a sexist society. The symbolism of the wallpaper and the woman trapped within it are essential for the message of Gilman’s short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†. In order to understand this one must first look at the author’s life. According to Elain Hedges, who†¦show more content†¦The narrator is diagnosed with a â€Å"nervous disorder† and is ordered by her physician, who also happens to be her husband, to abstain from most activity and all intellectual work. The same treatment Gilman was forced to take part in. The narrator is deprived of any stimulus or outlet for thought or action, and she begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper. Her discovery of the women trapped in the pattern in the wallpaper symbolizes the pattern of behaviors and practices that trap the female sex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the â€Å"domestic† functions of the female and the â€Å"active† work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens. In the short story, the reader gets the sense that the narrator feels like the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Its symbolism progresses throughout the story. At first, it is just ugly and unappealing to look at because it is ripped, soiled, and an â€Å"unclean yellow.† It eventually captivates the narrator as she tries to figure out the seemingly formless pattern. The narrator eventually begins to hallucinate an eerie sub-pattern behind the main pattern. Ultimately, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a frantic woman, continually crawling and hunched,Show MoreRelatedSymbolism In The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman785 Words   |  4 PagesMolly Melching once said â€Å"to change society, we first must change minds.† In the story of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she tells a haunting and feminist masterpiece of a marriage in which both the narrator and her husband are trapped in their assigned roles. 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