For my annotated digital edition, I chose to focus on the use of symbolism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. This novel is set in the late nineteenth century and is about a woman whose husband is a doctor and believes her to be suffering from hysteria. Throughout the book, Gilman tells a tale through the narrator of societal pressures and norms driving the narrator mad as she fixates on the yellow wallpaper of the room she is locked in until she snaps and breaks out leaving the reader to speculate what happens once she is free. Through the strategy of symbolism, Gilman is able to project how the narrator is feeling about the situation she is in without directly explaining her emotions.
When Gilman describes the aesthetic of her room, she states “I lie here on this great immovable bed- it is nailed down, I believe and follow that pattern about by the hour”.(Gilman, page 6) This is interesting not only because she doubts herself even when making observations about clearly evident aspects of the room, but that she too is stuck quite like the bed. The bed is dead-nailed to the floor and can not move; it is destined to stay in one solitary place just like the narrator. She is also jailed to that one room with her only entertainment being the yellow wallpaper which she despises.
Another example of Gilman using symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper is how she views the wallpaper itself. On page 6 the narrator says “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.” and on that same page, the narrator states about the wallpaper “I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.” I believe the two of these statements are clearly related. The narrator feels as though she is not at all in control of her situations and is searching for a solution to her predicament through something tangible which in this case is the wallpaper.
The room itself which the narrator is imprisoned in resembles that of a jail cell. If we are to observe the structure itself, the room was meant to be a nursery for the narrator’s newborn baby but due to the narrator’s anxiety around the baby, her husband John’s sister takes care of the baby in another wing of the house while the narrator resides in the nursery/jail cell. The very concept of the room being a nursery which she is trapped in is very symbolic to how John infantilizes her. He consistently makes light of her worries and brushes them off or gaslights her by making comments such as “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.” on page four. What’s interesting about the infantilizing of the narrator by John is it is in direct contrast to how he has set the room up. Not only is the bed dead-nailed to the ground, but the door of the nursery remains locked and there are bars on the windows as well. This creates an atmosphere that depicts the narrator as someone who is dangerous and needs to be imprisoned which is in direct opposition to his viewing of her as toddler like and in need of protection.
In conclusion, even though The Yellow Wallpaper was written over a century ago, it remains relevant because even though we have made a lot of progress in recent years with women’s rights, we can never forget the past to work on bettering the future for generations to come. Things can always be better for marginalized groups such as women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, neuro-diverse people and more. I believe it is our job as educated people with privilege to do our part in making the world a better place for all who exist within it.
