The Oppressed Female
            
             Suffering from depression the narrator and her husband moves to a "a colonial mansion" (Gilman 140) for a few months; she is made to stay in this large upstairs room with dreaded wall paper, "I never saw worse paper in my life"(141). As her insanity progresses she becomes increasingly aware of a woman present in the pattern of the wallpaper. The woman struggles against the paper bar. The woman caught in the wallpaper seems to parallel the narrator's virtual imprisonment by her husband.
             While the narrator's perception of the wall paper show her increasing madness, it symbolizes the struggle of women who attempt to break out of the society's feminine standards.
             The narrator put forth plainly in her first description of the wall paper, what the nature of women is believed to be "dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they . . . destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions"(141). Here woman are depicted as confusing, yet curious enough to demand further scrutiny. Then "lame uncertain curves"(141), infers that women have no common sense or wits about them and should be told what to do.
            
             This is exactly what the narrator's husband John does. The narrator writes that he "hardly lets me stir without special direction," and that she is given "a schedule of prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me" (141). He also speaks to her with a condescending tone, using demeaning names for her such as "What is it little girl"(146) throughout the whole story. In fact, we never learn her proper name, which makes her seem even less of a human being.
             She depicts the pattern of the wallpaper as "a florid arabesque" (145), from the she mean that a woman mind consist of pattern of pretty flowers. The narrator also d...