Childbirth In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Some people might say childbirth is a miracle, but it can cause many changes mentally and physically. The change is shown throughout the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Where the narrator goes insane from being “trapped: in a hideous room that makes her go insane. The husband rips the narrator's baby from her, and tells her she’s not fit to raise a child because of her postpartum depression. Telling her she can’t do any type of “work” in this new home she’s not used to with a hideous wallpaper. She obsesses over this wallpaper so much she eventually goes insane. Throughout the story, Gilman uses symbolism to reveal the theme that people can become mentally unstable without the freedom to express themselves.

From being trapped she later becomes insane from doing nothing but being in her own head thinking about the wallpaper for 3 months straight. In one scene, she notices that the pattern is moving because the woman behind the bars shakes it, little does she know it's really her. “The front pattern does move-- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (654). The facts clearly indicate that the narrator is hallucinating from thinking about the wallpaper all the time because she has nothing else to do. She’s becoming more and more crazy. She sees this woman behind the bars in the wallpaper, which symbolizes herself, as trapped in her own mind so long she goes crazy. This is just one example of a symbol to show the narrator going is slowly going

So if she gets caught she won’t be able to write anymore, and will go mad even faster. As the narrator writes in her diary, she explains that she doesn’t want to accept the fact that she isn’t okay. Her husband would tell her nothings wrong with her, to not worry, this nervous depression will go away.The only thing that helps is distractions, which is writing for her. She writes,“‘I don’t know why I should write this. I don’t want to. I don’t feel able. And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way—it is such a relief!’”(651). Overall, the writer of this story is trying to give hints throughout the story through symbolism to show that someone can become mentally unstable if unable to express