In the beginning of the story, the author continuously talks of the wallpaper as being a hideous creation. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.? (pg. 107). She talks about being able to see two different patterns in the paper as well, one behind the other. In theback pattern? she sees a figure of a woman who is desperately trying to escape the bars formed by thefront pattern?. This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights?I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that sill and conspicuous front design.? (pg. 110). .
Numerous hours of being kept in her room and being surrounded by the wallpaper, has enabled out author the chance to study the wall in great detail. She finds that the paper some what represents her, and her life. As in the wallpaper, our author is being kept down and made helpless by her husband, or the front design. She sees this, and that is why at the end the author, is ripping down the wallpaper, in order to help this lady be rid of any male dominance and allow her to live her own life filled with her own decisions. .
Obviously the main theme of this story was about equal rights between men and woman; and in the story there were some key symbols, which led you in that direction. John, our author's husband, places many restrictions on his wife due to her condition of being mentally ill. One can see any loving husband do this to his wife, especially when she is sick, but John does not even seem to listen to his wife's continuous pleas to move her from the room with the horrid wallpaper. John just simply tells her to stick with it and not to let it bother her, and won't believe how much the wallpaper bothers his wife. I wanted one downstairs, that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window?but John would not hear of it.