The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells of a new mother's obsession and hatred for the wallpaper in her room. However, the wallpaper is not what she is actually talking about. Someone who realizes that the wallpaper itself symbolizes how the narrator feels about herself will best understand this story.
Readers must first be aware that this story is told by what is written in the narrator's journal. "And I must put this away - he hates to have me write a word" (163). This gives the impression that the reader has access to the narrator's most personal thoughts and innermost feelings. After all, a journal is where most people record these kinds of ideas. This narrator uses words such as "repellant revolting unclean faded [ ]" and "dull, sickly" (163) to describe the wallpaper. These are comparable to words that people who suffer from depression might use to describe the way they feel about themselves. Here, readers get the sense that she has very poor self-esteem, as most people with depression do. She also makes reference to the wallpaper as being "dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate" (163). This implies that the narrator feels that her condition may, in fact, be making her a burden to those around her. She states this fact when she writes, "and here I am a comparative burden already" (163). Further describing the wallpaper, she says that the "color is hideous unreliable [ ]" (168), which may be taken to mean that her condition has made her feel like a terrible wife to her husband and a bad mother to her new baby. By saying that the color is unreliable, she implies the feeling that she cannot fulfill her duties to her family because she is sick. Viewing herself as undependable is sure to add to her poor self-image. .
The narrator also describes seeing a woman behind the wallpaper. "I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure" (165).
