Charlotte Perkins Gilman transfers insanity to existence in the short story, “The Yellow Paper”. The main character goes through a “cure” in order for her low spirits to go away following the birth of her daughter. She goes insane after given the treatment of rest cure to relieve her symptoms. The author writes about the process of the main characters mentality getting to a level in which isn’t recognizable. It captures the attention deeply probably because Gilman has gone through the ordeal of insanity as well. “The Yellow Wall Paper”, discloses the struggles that women undertake when they are imprisoned by insanity through symbolism, setting, and characterization.
The woman isn’t able to have her own voice in the world. The yellow wallpaper in the room represents that. She uses the wallpaper to symbolize family authority, social standings, and medical practices. The design in the wallpaper is seen as prison bars. It symbolizes the limits of what she can say or do. As Gilman states, “But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman,2006). The narrator sees how the women in the wallpaper are trying to get out. Some of the women try to go through the small spaces in the pattern which lead them to be strangled by the pattern to death. This shows when a woman spoke out, society would
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“It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village...for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate houses for the gardeners and people" (Gilman,2006). The house is away from civilization. Once she enters the nursery room upstairs in the household that John puts her in. She prefers one downstairs that has lovely chintz curtains with roses all over the window and a door that opens onto the piazza. The windows have bars and a "repellent" and "smouldering unclean yellow"