In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" the author uses symbolism and metaphors to further the understanding of how different women were treated in the late 1800s. There is such a vast difference in the way they were treated then and how women are treated now.  In this story a woman is diagnosed with a nervous depression by her husband, who is a doctor. He locks her in a room where she continues to lose her mind even more as the days pass.

To begin with, symbolism plays a huge role in this story. One symbol that is used is the bed in the room the main character is confined to. The bed itself is huge and chained to the floor which represents how women at the time are chained down to the housewife life and never have the chance to do what they love. Gilman was an advocate for women's rights and thinking they are equal to men and should be able to do what they want with their lives.   Another symbol that is very apparent to the reader while analyzing this story is how she sees women in the wallpaper pattern trying to get out but not being able to. This is not just a coincidence by any means and Gilman uses the wallpaper as a direct correlation to how the main character felt. The moonlight is used to symbolize how alive women could be in the night because their husbands were sleeping and could not watch them. In the story, the narrator sleeps all during the day, and the woman in the wallpaper is also motionless, but when the moonlight would strike in the room they both were up and "creeping", as the author explains it. The fact that she starts to sleep all day and stay up all night also could symbolize how women in that time began to feel hopeless. The narrator knew that she had a serious illness but her husband had not planned to do anything about it and that pushes her to give up on even trying to feel better. Most women of the time began to realize they were never going to be able to be happy and do what they want with their lives. They were to live as the husband said and that was their only option and that made them a lost cause and hopeless.

Another big literary device used in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is metaphor. Just as the bed in the narrator's room is symbolic to the 1800s male dominated world, it also is perverted into a metaphorical comparison to her imprisonment in the house. She, in a sense, is her bed. The bed is chained to the floor of that one room not moving at any time in the future and the main character is really "chained" to her house by her husband. Another metaphorical comparison Gilman uses is the way the narrator views the garden at the beginning of the story and she feels toward it at the end. At the beginning the garden is seen as "delicious" and full of opportunity and by the end the narrator says that even if women are able to enter into the garden they must still lay low and creep only at night. She mentions it being loathsome and frightening by the end, also. The daytime and nighttime in the story are compared drastically. As mentioned above the narrator sleeps all through the day while the sun is up and her husband is up but when the moon trades places with the sun so does her outlook on life. With the moon comes freedom for her to creep around the room and for her to interact with the woman in the wallpaper that also only moves around in the night. This is also how most women of the time period felt. They knew they were shackled in their marriages but the night time gave them a break from all their responsibilities as a house wife and being a mother and gave them some time to themselves that was much needed. 

In the late 1800s, the lives of women was immensely different that the lives of women in today's society. All of a young ladies life up until adulthood she is told what her life is going to be. She will do as directed by her husband and have children and raise them. Nothing more, nothing less. They had no individual freedoms to do what they wanted or do what they needed to be happy. Back then it was a male dominated society. In contrast, girls are told they can do what they want and that they are equal to men. Everyday there is a step toward equality, it seems like. If women in the 1800s would hear we have a woman running for president there is a high doubt that they would not believe it. They were restricted from even leaving the house some days. They cook, clean, and do whatever else the husband can think of. They were looked at as second class citizens and definitely did not have as many rights as men. Women's lives were filled with more obligations and very few choices. The husband of the woman had rights to everything that is hers, even her body. 

All in all, "The Yellow Wallpaper" sums up how women had to be and live their lives in the late 1800's. Gilman uses symbolism and metaphors to show the relation between how the narrator in the story felt and how that compared to most women of the time. The historical background is used to further the understanding of the reader for this time period and how the lives of women then compare to women now.  
