The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an interpretation how women are
             oppressed by males in society. Gilman attempts to reveal this oppression through her use of male
             imposed confinement. One woman's struggle with both mental and physical confinement,
             represents the greater battles between women and men. Confinement represents classic male
             oppression and the woman represents all women and their struggle to break free from male
             dominance. The significance of the confinement is seen in both the vivid descriptions which
             symbolize the male dominance and the woman's subsequent reaction to this incarceration.
             The yellow wallpaper paints a distinct picture of confinement in both the physical and
             symbolic sense. Physically the house itself serves to lead to feelings of isolation. It represents the
             classic institution, that part of society which attempts to constrain the individual. The house is an
             isolated estate set back from the road outside of town. It is surrounded by walls and a gate,
             ensuring complete isolation. Within the mansion the narrator is relegated to the attic, shut in a
             nursery complete with "rings and things" in the walls and a bed nailed to the floor. It is in this
             nursery that the narrator slowly slips into insanity. Within the confines of this dungeon-like room
             the woman gradually is subjected to male oppression symbolic of that which occurs within society.
             Symbolically the narrator being confined to the room by her husband is representative of
             the ideals in society at the time. The 19th Century was a time in which males were afforded a
             dominance over women, a time when women were nothing more than subservience. By confining
             his wife to the nursery John exercised this dominance over his wife. He exemplified the dominance
             men had over women, the ability to ensure a woman's dependence on a man through exerting the
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