The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, of the “Yellow Wallpaper,” purposefully left so many significant symbols and meanings in her short novel for her readers to interpret in different ways. When I read the short story for the first time, it was easy to miss many of these hidden symbols. It was not until the second time I read the “Yellow Wallpaper,” when I picked up on all the time Gilman mentioned different types of lights. The narrator, throughout the story makes sure to mention her highs and lows and if they were in different times of the day. It is very apparent throughout the story that the narrator mentions the different times of day, with the different lighting, to tell her readers her attitude on life in that certain time.

The narrator is ill and her husband John, a doctor, thinks that if they take some time away, she will get better. The narrator is forced, by her husband to stay and sleep in a room with yellow wallpaper; however, this makes her even more miserable than she was already feeling. The narrator even talks about how she thinks, “the color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight,” relating the room to the light (301). From this, the reader can infer, she does not enjoy the sunlight because it turned the room the is staying in, into a miserable place. 

In this time period, men had so much more power in relationships and marriages, then women did; so, whatever the man said goes. She struggles with how much her husband controls her life. It seems like from the readers’ standpoint she almost likes it better when he is not there during the day, because of his job. One night while on their stay the narrator tries to talk, “to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window,” abruptly without even listening to what she had to say (300). 

The reader can tell that the narrator obviously does not feel the way a wife should feel towards her husband. The narrator loves her husband and appreciates how he is somewhat trying to help her but as the story goes on she starts to feel different. She feels as if he is not concerned with her life and instead trying to control her; however, when her husband goes to work during the day she seems more at ease. She enjoys life more in the, “daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind,” without her husband around controlling her life (306). She can think, do, say almost whatever she pleases, without her husband telling her no or that she should not do a certain something.

The author does not just mention light when the narrator and husband are having issues though. The narrator has an illness, some readers may think she is dying, has schizophrenia, hallucination, the possibilities are endless. As the story goes on, the narrator’s sickness gets worse and worse, but she does not think this. In the night time, notice the change of lighting, the narrator has a mind for herself, where her illness gets to her the most, “as soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her,” in the middle of the night, not even knowing that what she is experiencing is not real (307).  During the change of daylight to moonlight, her sickness makes her see and act in a totally different person; the moonlight is almost making her sickness progress. The narrator almost goes into a sleep coma, where she imagines and also says she sees a girl figure.

The author, purposefully makes sure to mention the different lights throughout the story, so readers could pick up on it and make sense of it for what their personal beliefs on it are. It seems like the narrator, overall, likes her life better when it is daylight, because her husband is at work and does not bother her. But at the same time during the moonlight she sees the girl thing, figure, which she likes to watch. So from this the readers can interpret what they think the narrator likes better. The narrator’s illness gets progressively worse as the story goes along and the different light changes as the story goes along. In any type of literature, there will be symbols and hidden meanings, even if the first time you read it and nothing is there. 