I am sure other editors might disagree with me but I don't
actually think this story has much to do with "haunting" in the traditional
oh-no-there's-a-ghost-behind-you kind of way. The principle theme of this incredible
short story is one woman's account of her own mental condition and how this spirals down
and down until she reaches a point of complete insanity. We need to be aware of the way
in which the female narrator is unreliable, and we need to see how she projects her
feelings of despair, entrapment and anger in the curious yellow wallpaper in her
room.
Note how as the narrative progresses she sees a woman
in the wallpaper, who moves around and "shakes" the bars of the yellow
wallpaper:
The front pattern does move--and no wonder! The
woman behind shakes it!
...Then in the very bright spots
she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes
them hard.
And she is all the time trying to climb through.
But nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that is why it has
so many heads.
What we come
to realise is that this woman that she sees in the wallpaper is her own intellectual and
emotional self that is "trapped" and "encaged." Although her husband means well and is
following the orders of the doctor, she is not allowed to escape or to express herself,
and thus she eventually gives in to insanity.
Thus whilst
there is a supernatural presence in the wallpaper, we can identify that it represents
the anger and rage of the narrator who is forced to lie in silence on a bed in this
room, imprisoned and encaged just as surely as the woman that she sees raging so
strongly against her captivity.
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