The Yellow Wallpaper

    The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a “powerful indictment of the ways in which women can be smothered by relationships” (288). The yellow wallpaper in the nursery is a huge symbol in the story. At first, they believe it to be unpleasant, soiled, gross and an unclean yellow. The wallpaper has a formless pattern. The woman says, “there are things in the wallpaper that nobody knows but me, or ever will” (295). The woman is not a normal everyday woman, she is someone who interests people because of her thoughts. She also has strange feelings, “And it is like a woman is stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t feel like it a bit. I wonder - I begin to think - I wish John would take me away from here” (295). The yellow wallpaper that bothers the woman is a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women in the world.
    A woman behind the wallpaper shows how woman back then were not able to do whatever they wanted. The standard job for a woman back then would have been a mother, a housewife or a maid. Nowadays women can basically do whatever job they want. There are many jobs out there now that women and men can do. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator sees this cage as changed up with the heads of many women. They all tried to escape but they could not. As they look at the pattern, they realize that they are trying to get away from all of the normal things in life.
    There are always moments in life when we think something is there when it really is not. It may be when we are at home alone and we hear one little sound and think that someone is there. The woman thought someone was hiding behind the wallpaper, she may have psychological issues that make her think this way. She was so caught up in this feeling, that she did not have much else to concentrate on. Something that scares people can make them think about nothing else and it may distract them from everything else they are doing at that very moment. We need to forget about these things and move on just like the woman should have done.