e details about the room are suggestive of a room in a sanitarium. This suggestion foreshadows the wife's eventual descent into madness. The wallpaper is the detail the wife becomes obsessed with; it serves to reflect to the reader her growing insanity. In the beginning she views it as horrid, "committing every artistic sin" (471). Even then, she goes into great detail in describing the wallpaper, more than she does any other part of the room. The wife depicts not only the paper's repulsive shade of yellow, but also its "sprawling, flamboyant pattern" and very poor condition (471). As her mind grows more and more unsound, she follows the pattern "by the hour," at which time she begins to see bars in the paper; then she sees someone behind those bars (474). The reader can see and feel the wife's insanity growing as she reacts to what she "sees" in the wallpaper. The attention she gives the wallpaper is partially due to the solitary setting of her room. She has nothing to do but stare at the wallpaper all day long. The room is located on the top floor of the mansion, away from all the everyday happenings of the household. Here the author develops her theme of isolation by shifting the scene from the forlorn setting of the mansion to the lonely setting of the room. This parallels the narrowing of the wife's focus from all the aspects of her surroundings to just the wallpaper, then, at the end, from the wallpaper to herself - her freedom, or lack of it. There are no outside stimuli to take her mind off the wallpaper due to her husband/doctor's edict that she is to "rest" and not have any responsibility. She is "to have," she says, "perfect rest."(471). Since she has nothing to do but study the wallpaper, she continues her search for something deeper in it until, finally, she sees herself trapped in it, the woman she sees "stooping down and creeping about" behind the pattern (475). It is at this point the wife notices the musty ...
