Once at the "ancestral home", the narrator comes to reside in a nursery and not a regular bedroom. However, it was not her choice to make and she was put into the room her husband chose for her:.
"I don't like our room a bit. I wanted the one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had the roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it." (Gilman, 2).
MacPike states that "the fact that the narrator's prison-room is a nursery indicates her status in society" (MacPike, 137). Children stay in nurseries. The significance of the nursery is that ideologically she is seen as a child. Children depend on adults for their survival, so, in essence, the woman is a child who has to depend upon a man for her survival. The narrator says of her husband John, "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction" (Gilman, 2), further proving that just as a child needs permission and guidance, so too do women. .
Often throughout the story the narrator is portrayed to have child-like ways. She often "disobeys" her husband. "I did write for a while in spite of them" (Gilman, 2) the narrator says. Just as a child might have to sneak around to do things that their parents will not allow, so too does the narrator " having to be sly about it or meet with heavy opposition" (Gilman, 2). .
The next symbol that MacPike picks out are the bars on the windows of the nursery. Not only is the narrator a child but she is a prisoner too. "The narrator is to be forever imprisoned in childhood, forbidden to "escape" into adulthood" (MacPike, 138). The bars can have many meanings, some of which MacPike did not talk about, for instance: in a male dominated society women have to be submissive in order for them to stay in control and by placing in her in a nursery, with bars on the windows and a sister-in-law who watches her around the clock there is no chance of a physical escape.