One of the aspects of “The Yellow Wallpaper” that makes the story so intriguing is the setting of the book. Many examples symbolism can be found in Gilman’s book that help cement the narrator’s distress into the minds of her readers. One of these examples is the wallpaper itself. It provides a tangible expression of the narrator’s mind as she finds herself in a marriage built off of gaslighting and submission. On page 6, the narrator describes the pattern of the wallpaper right after describing how her husband, John, threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, “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.” If we are to analyze this quote, you may find that the narrator is using the wallpaper to project how she is feeling in this loveless marriage. In her literary critique, Joyce Dyer discusses the significance of symbolism specifically in “A Shameful Affair”. The farmhouse in this story acts as a setting to which great turmoil takes place in the story. Similarly, Gilman also takes this route by making her setting act as a tangible way of expressing the intenseness taking place in the story. He threatened to send her away a few sentences before she writes this quote, which in turn, could mean that she is using the wallpaper as a way of escaping him. Through the wallpaper, she is looking for a way out of the house and from John.
