Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the “The Yellow Wallpaper,” left many significant symbols and meanings in her short novel for her readers to interpret. When reading the short story for the first time, it was easy to miss many of these hidden symbols. After, reading “The Yellow Wallpaper,” again, it is much easier to pick up on the many references that Gilman mentions about different types of lighting. Throughout the story, the narrator mentions her highs and lows and how they were in different times of the day. It becomes 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 mentally ill and her husband, John, who is a doctor, thinks that if they take some time away, she will get better. When they rent a house and John forces his wife to stay and sleep in a room with yellow wallpaper. This, however, 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 that the narrator does not enjoy the sunlight because it turned the room she was staying into a miserable place. 

During the time period when this story takes place, men had so much more power than women in relationships and marriages. At that time, whatever the man said went. The narrator struggles with how much her husband controls her life. From the reader’s standpoint, it seems like she almost likes it better when her husband 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 differently. She feels as if he is not concerned with her life and is 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 certain things.

The author does not just mention light only when the narrator and husband are having issues, though. The narrator has an illness. Some readers may think she is dying, or has schizophrenia or has hallucinations. The possibilities are endless. As the story goes on, the narrator’s sickness gets worse and worse, but she does not think this. During the night time  hours, with a noticeable 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 even further. The narrator almost goes into a sleep coma, where she imagines and also says she sees a girl figure.

The author makes sure to mention the different lighting throughout the story so readers could be aware of it and make sense of it as it relates to their own personal beliefs. Overall, it seems like the narrator 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 many types of literature, there are often symbols and hidden meanings, even if the first time you read the story, nothing appears to be there. 