The Yellow Wallpaper Bed Nailed To Floor

Having trouble understanding the yellow wallpaper.

The yellow wallpaper bed nailed to floor.

The yellow wallpaper is formatted as the narrator s journal entries. However her husband disapproves of this practice and chastises her whenever he sees her writing. Other important symbols in the yellow wallpaper are the nursery the barred windows and the nailed down bed. There is a bed bolted to the floor the wallpaper is peeling off and the windows are barred.

The rather dismal nursery and john s use of phrases such as blessed little goose gilman 488 his darling and his comfort and little girl gilman 491 depict the juvenile treatment of the narrator. When everyone is about to leave the nailed down bed is the only thing left in the room and the narrator describes it as fairly gnawed believing the children to be the culprits 655. It is heavy and old but most curiously it is nailed to the floor. The fact that the bed in her room is nailed down is an ominous sign that the narrator of the yellow wallpaper is being treated like a prisoner who might move the bed to try to escape or harm.

Here s an in depth analysis of the most important parts in an easy to understand format. The nursery is said to represent 19th century society s tendency to view women as children while the barred windows symbolize the emotional social and intellectual prison in which women of that era were kept.