" However, the narrator eventually secretly disobeys John by writing a journal, which awakens her realization that she desires escape from her husband and the room. .
The narrator seeks out escape through the yellow wallpaper on the walls of the room. At first she says "I never saw a worse paper in my life," but as she begins to lose her grasp on sanity she gets "really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper" (Gilman p380). .
The narrator notices two patterns in the wallpaper. The outside pattern is perceived to be bars, while the sub pattern is perceived to be something "like a woman, stooping and creeping about," and later "shaking the bars (Gilman)." Her initial dislike of the paper diminishes as she sees her own existence mirrored in the wallpaper. "I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern.It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please" (Gilman p387). Quawas states that this woman who is trapped within the wallpaper is not only a symbol of the narrator's entrapment due to her husband's overbearing, patriarchal superiority granted to him by his societal role, it is also a symbol of all Victorian women who were "bound and inhibited by a society that insisted that women were childlike and incapable of self-actualization"(Quawas). By the end of the story, the narrator finds escape when she becomes the wallpaper woman as she creeps along the floor the narrator states "I've got out at last.and I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back" (Gilman p387)! .
Beside exposing the oppression and entrapment caused by the inflexibility of Victorian gender roles, the yellow wallpaper also serves as a symbol to reveal the relationship between creativity and insanity. As a physician, John tells his wife to stay in bed, suppress her imagination, and discontinue her writing in order to improve her fragile mental condition.
