behind her facade. Since any deviation from the norm of female behavior was anciently attributed to the uterus, the "strange, provoking, formless sort of figure" represents the womb.The narrator further describes the movement behind the wallpaper: "And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern" (262). Just as the womb creeps within the hysteric's body, the woman creeps behind the pattern of the wallpaper. The act of the woman "stooping down" also suggests a regression to childhood, which is also a regression to the womb. In this respect, the stooping woman wandering behind the wallpaper symbolizes the wandering uterus in the body.Another aspect of the ancient view of hysteria that Gilman confronts with her use of symbols in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the way in which the medical profession prevented the uterus from wandering about the body. As Cheryl Meyer writes in The Wandering Uterus: Politics and the Reproductive Rights of Women: No one knew for certain how to prevent [the hysterical fit] from happening, but one cure was to anchor the uterus. This could easily be accomplished through either impregnating the woman or keeping the uterus moist through intercourse so it would not seek out the moisture of other organs. (1)Gilman employs symbols of prison and entrapment to represent the process of anchoring the uterus. Gilman's symbols represent the literal anchor of inequality that suppresses women within a misogynist society.The narrator's bedroom is the most obvious symbol of woman's entrapment in a misogynist society. She describes the history of the room in her journal: "It was a nursery first and then a playroom and gymnasium, I should judge for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls" (257). The description of the barred windows and the rings on the walls reveals the prison-like environment of the nursery. The emphasis on the functionality as "a nursery fi...
