The Yellow Wallpaper Itself

From The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The wallpaper is the story's central symbol, its hideous pattern becoming a mirror of the narrator's confined consciousness and the prison of domestic ideology.
Opening section

"One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin... The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smudgy unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight." The first description.

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Middle section

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day." The wallpaper becomes a coded text only she can read.

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Late section

"The front pattern DOES move -- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!" The pattern reveals itself as bars imprisoning a double of the narrator.

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