After reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman story, "The Yellow Wallpaper". I quickly realised what the wallpaper symbolizes. The wallpaper affects a woman suffering from post-partum depression, and she is improperly treated with isolation and inactivity. While her husband John and her brother, who are well known physicians, have no doubt that she is fine. Many factors follow up this story, the wallpaper symbolizes many things for the way John's wife acts, such as the ones I will discuss: life and the evil.
First of all, the wallpaper symbolizes life, because at many occasions in the story, there is the impression that the wallpaper is alive and fr that it as a very visible presence. The story stated many examples of how the wallpaper was alive, but there was one sentence that stood out: "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (p. 69). Charlotte Perkins Gillman, was refering to the wallpaper that wanted to break loose as much as John's wife did.
Also, there is the evil that lurks inside the wallpaper. The wallpaper tends to spread an evil atmosphere over the story. The author clearly demonstrates that with two eye catching sentences, "That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I dont care-there is something strange about the house-I can feel it"(p64). The other sentence is, "This paper looks to me as if it knew what vicious influence it had." These events make us think that these hauntings occure, but really these events are triggered from John's wife's post-partum depression illness.
To conclude, I thought John's wife went through the events of feeling that the wallpaper was alive and that it was evil because of her post-partum illness. Fortunatly, she had a supporting brother and husband.
