After analyzing the story, it could easily be said that the author was trying to portray the struggle of domination between men and women. In a sense the narrator eventually escapes her husband's control but at the cost of her own sanity. I feel that Gilman's story can be taken in its most literal sense as the battle between male and female, but to dig deeper, why couldn't we say that the story shows a general struggle over the control of our own lives?

The general population is brought up by some authority that tells us what is right and wrong, and as we grow older we sl

owly become more independent. As we move away from whomever or whatever has raised us, we begin to savor our sovereignty, but also realize that now we still have to answer to someone. This someone can be a boss, landlord, the government, God, etc. We are never entirely free, that is until we are dead (or at least dead to this world). Although, I feel we can never really be free, there are some things that can act as a temporary escape.

The woman's husband treats her like a child. He says to her, "What is it little girl?" "Don't go walking about like that, you'll get cold." I think that Gilman intentionally made the room a nursery to even further show this. The restraints within the nursery, such as the barred windows and "rings and things in the walls" [2] are symbolic of the fact that the narrator is a prisoner in her own home: she is forced to rest herself and is "absolutely forbidden to 'work'" [3] until she is well again.

The wallpaper is symbolic of the state of mind of the narrator. The room where

Some common words found in the essay are:
Perkins Gilman, yellow wallpaper, Yellow Wallpaper, escape husband's, narrator's mental, husband's control,
Approximate Word count = 691
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)