The “Yellow Wallpaper” is a central image to the story. Explain it’s significance. What else about the setting is important to the story?

The Yellow wallpaper represents a metaphorical prison that the narrator is in. The creeping figure in the wallpaper represents the narrator. When John curbs her creativity and writing, the narrator takes it upon herself to make some sense of the wallpaper. She reverses her initial feeling of being watched by the wallpaper and starts actively studying and decoding its meaning. She untangles its chaotic pattern and locates the figure of a woman struggling to break free from the bars in the pattern. Over time, as her insanity deepens, she identifies completely with this woman and believes that she, too, is trapped within the wallpaper. When she tears down the wallpaper over her last couple of nights, she believes that she has finally broken out of the wallpaper within which John has imprisoned her.