The Wallpaper: Her side that her society has forced her to suppress.
The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a woman who is forced to live in a way that is not natural to her instincts. She is a woman that full of creativity and spirit and wishes to express herself through her writing however, due to her environment and the people around her she is unable to do so. Her husband, family and friends expect her to be a simple-minded mother and housewife and in order to please them the woman suppresses her creative spirit. The side of herself that she suppresses becomes personified as the yellow wallpaper in her country cottage and which leads to her becoming insane. .
The woman of the story has found herself in the life of a sheltered mother and housewife. She is pressured by her husband and friends to live it happily and embrace it, but something inside her won't let her. The wallpaper represents this thing inside her. The thing that says you"re more than this, you need to express and convey all of the ideas that are inside you. Who cares if they don't conform to society's norms? Express them, embrace them and deal with them. The woman has suppressed this thing for so long, but it won't go away. It has become alive in the yellow wallpaper and forces her to deal with it. .
When the woman first meets this thing she hates it. She finds it confusing and repulsive as she describes her first encounter with it, " It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study. no wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long". However this hatred soon begins to change into intrigue as she is forced by her lockdown in the cottage to confront it. She begins to try to figure it out. She hates it one day and is intrigued by it the next. She is struggling in her mind with a way to understand it, but her oppressive environment doesn't allow her to express the feeling she is having about it.
