Women in the late nineteenth century were generally viewed as homemakers, "the economy and the society dictated that women should work in the home, taking care of home and hearth" (Radek). They had little influence on the lives of those around them or their own lives. Viewed as weak, passive, and susceptible to madness, women in 1890 were belittled and seen as second-class citizens with few rights. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the unnamed main character represents women's lack of control in marriage in the late nineteenth century through soliloquies, symbolism, and character digression. 

Written in a first-person narrative, much of what the reader is getting to hear and picture is a soliloquy. Only the reader can understand the thoughts of the narrator as her feelings are expressed through the hidden writing only the reader can see as told and thought by only the narrator. As she shares her feelings about her desires and how she feels about her husband, the reader can begin to form the image that her opinions and desires are undervalued if not completely unrecognized by her husband.  This is typical, as her husband, a physician named John, believes her to have a temporary nervous depression and slight hysterical tendency. The narrator believes the opposite of what John says. She "believes that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do her good" (Gilman 154) and expresses her inability to share her desires with her husband because "he is careful and loving, and hardly lets her stir without special direction" (155). He constantly turns down her desires to change the wallpaper and leave the house and have company over. In the nineteenth century, "it was a wife's duty to care for her husband's interests" (Fortin), and therefore, she chooses to respect her husband's wishes rather than her own. In this expectation to serve her husband, she has no control over what she thinks is best for her, eventually leading to her insanity in a search for control and her inability to speak for herself against her husband. She goes on to talk much more about his control over her and compliments how "he is so wise, and loves her so", but she finds "it is so hard to talk with John about her case" (Gilman 159). She eventually gives up on sharing her desires with him after they discuss going away three weeks before the rental is over. At this point, we receive only the thoughts in her head. She "is getting a little afraid of John" (161) and starts to make up for the lack of control of her desires by focusing intensely on the wallpaper, finding a pattern within it. She eventually gets so lost in this lack of control and suppressing her thoughts that she seems to have become the woman trying to escape the wallpaper. She "shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard" (165). She is now in control, as women in the 1890's struggled to be, and has become the woman behind the wallpaper that women.

This woman behind the wallpaper symbolizes what the narrator wants to be. She feels trapped and controlled by her husband and wants to be free and creep about as she pleases. "Women were forced to remain at home because their husbands were expected to go out into the world" (Fortin) in the late nineteenth century, but many women wanted something more. The narrator "believes that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do her good" (Gilman 154), showing that she wants some kind of control in her life. Women's lack of control in the 1890's is depicted in the story multiple times as the narrator's desires are constantly being ignored and overlooked, along with the fact that her husband "hardly lets her stir without special direction" (155). She requests to have the room repapered and although John "meant to repaper the room, he said that she was letting it get the better of her" (156) and dismissed the idea in an instant. Her lack of control is symbolized by the crazy designs in the wallpaper. They represent the various desires and emotions that she has that are all stirring, and she is the woman stuck behind the wallpaper wanting to break free and have control. "The wallpaper is torn off in spots" (157) representing that she has given up on some desires and "the woman behind", being the narrator, "shakes it" (163) to try and escape the control. "She is always creeping" around during the daytime, writing in secret and attempting to avoid the control around her from her husband. At night, she is stuck behind the wallpaper when her husband is at home. The wallpaper is representative of a prison of control that the narrator is stuck behind during the times her husband is at home. She finally attempts to escape the control in the end as she locks herself in the room and she wonders, "if they all come out of that wallpaper as she did" (165). This is a strange part of the story as coming out of the wallpaper represents her newfound freedom and control. She wonders if the only way to escape the control is to go through an experience such as she had with the wallpaper. The narrator seems to have entered an almost childlike state in which she disobeys John by locking herself in the room and having control of a situation. This is her way of finding control that women generally did not have in marriage in the late nineteenth century. 

Women in the 1890's were stereotypically viewed as weak, passive, and susceptible to madness (Radek). Children are generally related to the same qualities and live in a certain fear and respect for their fatherly figure. In the late nineteenth century "women were caught in the middle of a society where men complained that companionship was difficult with women because they had to treat them as little children, at the same time women were encouraged to act that way" (Fortin). John constantly makes decisions for his wife and puts her in the room that once held children. This foreshadowing of character digression is just the first relation of the narrator to the same characteristics of a child as her time passes within the room. Her "imaginative power and habit of story-making" lead more to the belief that she is like a child. John calls her 'little girl' (Gilman 160) when she wakes up in the middle of the night to look at the wall. She also builds a small fear for John, similar to that which a child would have for a fatherly figure. As her childishness and imagination progress to higher levels, she begins to form the image of a woman behind the wallpaper. Children generally lack control in a household, and search for ways that they can have it, as the narrator does in the story. She eventually disobeys the rules when she "locked the door and threw the key down into the front path" (165), showing even more her character digression as she seemingly pretends to be the woman stuck behind the wallpaper. "In spite of you and Jane" (166), "you" referring to John and "Jane" referring to her old adult version of herself, she has escaped the control of adults represented by the wallpaper and therefore escaped the restrictions of her husband and marriage that women in the late nineteenth century had.

Stereotypes about women in the nineteenth century ultimately led women to attempt to escape the prison that was marriage shortly after 1890. The lack of control in the narrator's marriage drove her to keep all of her emotions and desires pent up inside of her. That ultimately led to her characteristic digression from an adult to that of a child and she seemingly loses her mind. She initially had little influence on her own life, but in the end she comes to find the control that most women did not have in marriage in the 1890's.
