The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator describes the figure behind the wallpaper as a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” “The faint figure behind seems to shake the paPern, just as if she wanted to get out.” What could the figure represent and why is “behind” the appropriate word? What does the paPern symbolize? What gender assumpDon do these symbols underscore?

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Last updated by jill d #170087
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The figure in the wallpaper represents the narrator and her desire to escape. Unable to freely express herself because of the limitations her husband has placed upon her, the narrator becomes fascinated by the figure in the wallpaper that she believes, like her, is looking for a way to escape. The wallpaper and the nursery represent what was seen as the imprisonment of women in their roles of domesticity.

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The Yellow Wallpaper

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