In the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, symbolism plays a large factor. ... At first she hates it because it lacks definition and is, in her eyes, an horrid yellow color. ... The wallpaper symbolizes this woman's mind. ... This is the most powerful symbol in the story. By tearing down the paper, the woman has finally broken free of her confines. ...
"And from the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end." - it is rather a description not an exact symbol, but nevertheless phallic, it has even oral connotations. ... "Or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such an intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear." ... In all the cases the snail symbolizes the woman and bears the pronouns, it and its. ... The woman does everything, but useless, the leaf remains dead. ... In the last paragraph the two level...
Glaspell's much longer story is about two women, a farm woman, Mrs. ... Hale, who are thrown together in the home of a jailed woman, Mrs. ... It is a symbol of survival, hope, promise, and endurance. ... Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles...but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illuminated by a yellow burning under the dark. ... In this story, the symbol of the phoenix represents strength and hope, as opposed to the symbol of the canary in "A Jury of Her Peers." ...
