| Major Themes
Feminism and the yellow wallpaper: In "The Yellow Wallpaper," wallpaper, a usually feminine, floral decoration on the interior of walls, is a symbol of female imprisonment within the domestic sphere (see Female imprisonment in the domestic sphere, below). 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. Over time, as her insanity deepens, she identifies completely with this woman - the bars in her own room help her cause - and believes she, too, is trapped within the wallpaper. When she tears down the wallpaper over her last couple of nights, she believes that she has broken out of the wallpaper within which John has imprisoned her. The wallpaper's yellow color has many possible associations - with jaundiced sickness, with discriminated against minorities of the time (especially the Chinese), and with the rigid oppression of masculine sunlight (see Sunlight as oppressive, moonlight as liberating, below). By tearing it down, the narrator emerges from the wallpaper and asserts her own identity, albeit a somewhat confused, insane one. Though she must crawl around the room, as the woman in the wallpaper crawls around, this "creeping" is the first stage in a feminist uprising; though the early feminists had to hide in the shadows, they paved the way for later generations to walk with heads held high.
Female imprisonment in the domestic sphere: John's domineering ways have imprisoned the narrator into a domestic prison. Just as the woman in the wallpaper is imprisoned within a symbol of the feminine domestic sphere (see Feminism and the yellow wallpaper, above), in which women are expected only to clean the house and take care of the children, the narrator is trapped within her prison-like room and mansion. The exterior of the mansion is described as a series of closed-off sections, while the room she rests in, with its numerous barred windows and immovable bed, was probably formerly used to house an insane inhabitant. The narrator's sense of being watched by the wallpaper suggests the idea of the room as a surveillance-friendly prison cell. John, as a practical doctor, has patronizing concern his imaginative, literary wife. He frequently refers to her with the diminutive "'little'" and rarely takes her anxieties seriously. Instead, he always provides his own diagnosis, never allowing her to work off her sickness by writing. Overall, he infantilizes her, treating her as a helpless daughter rather than as an independent wife. The narrator feels even worse and more like a burden without the identities of wife and mother; the nanny, Mary, and John's housekeeper sister, Jennie, replace her in these regards. Unlike the narrator, Mary and Jennie do not have any aspirations beyond the domestic prison of the house.
Sunlight as oppressive, moonlight as liberating: Although the yellow color of the wallpaper has associations with illness and minorities (see Feminism and the yellow wallpaper, above), its most developed motif is with sunlight and moonlight. Sunlight is associated with John's ordered, dominating schedule; he prescribes something for the narrator for every waking hour while he goes about his daily rounds. The narrator, however, prefers to sleep in the daytime. At night, men's day jobs on the outside are more irrelevant and the balance between the sexes is evened somewhat at home. More importantly, the flexible subconscious roams free at night, as in during dreams. It is always by moonlight, a traditional symbol of femininity, that the narrator understands more about the figure trapped within the wallpaper. In sunlight, the woman stays still, afraid of being caught, and once she creeps about outside, she does so boldly only at night. The narrator cannot see this as well under the oppressive glare of sunlight in her room, but it becomes very clear by the cool, feminine light of the moon.
Aesthetic changes through insanity: Often overlooked for the deep symbolic content of the story, Gilman's prose is a model for a convincingly gradual and subtle decline into insanity. The narrator's tone changes from naïve and depressed to paranoid and excited, and as she grows insane, her sentences reflect the state of her mind. Much like the chaotic pattern in the wallpaper, the sentences get choppy and confusing, grafting together disconnected one-line comments.
ClassicNote on The Yellow Wallpaper
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