e rest cure is also represented in "The Yellow Wallpaper" as the weird color and smell of the wallpaper that disgusts the narrator. The narrator complains, "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw&emdash;not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things" (265). She complains of the smell: "It creeps all over the house" (265). In this respect, the wallpaper symbolizes the diaper that the patient must wear. Both the wallpaper and the diaper represent the indignity of the patient's treatment as infants.The fate of the female protagonist in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is Gilman's response to the misogynist view of hysteria from ancient times through the nineteenth century. The only option for women who are pigeonholed as mentally ill is to live up to society's expectation. Yet Gilman does not end "The Yellow Wallpaper" on a pessimistic note. She offers her protagonist hope in the form of the other women trapped behind the wallpaper. The narrator realizes the reason for the wallpaper's ever-changing pattern:The front pattern does move-and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. (265)The narrator finds solace in the fact that she is not the only woman being mistreated.The narrator discovers that the only way to over come the yellow wallpaper and society's misconstrued views towards women is to unite with other oppressed women. She expresses her triumph over the wallpaper: "I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper" (267). It is only when she unites with the other women trapped behind the wallpaper that she can start to see progress in the removal of the wallpaper.Hope for the role of women in society is also displayed through Gilman's use of imagery at the ending. The n...
