Theme of "The Yellow Wallpaper" through symbolism.

The theme of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that in the time period, speaking out as a woman was seen as crazy and wrong and that women need to break that pattern and break free from the control of a male driven society. This theme is shown through a lot of symbolism throughout the story. The narrator's use of imagery of a woman trying to escape the bounding wallpaper represents women's role in that time period as quiet, respectful, obedient housewives who, if out spoken, are considered crazy for it. Once the war began, women began working in places commonly thought of as a man's job as a part of the war effort and when the men came back, they came back to a woman driven society which frightened them. This caused women to see how the society had been before whenever men came back and tried to change society back into the way it had been before the war. With the experience of working,  women were beginning to see more easily the way their lifes had been run by men. The wallpaper symbolizes the current societ and men keeping the woman (representing all women of the time era) caged in their view of how life should run. This is inside of an example of this same type symbolism. The narrator began to question and speek out about things that her husband felt was inappropriate and he locked her up in a room isolated from anyone who he didn't feel was appropriate for her to talk to or associate with at all. This shows complete control being in the hand of the man and the woman is almost like his puppet. She can only do what he says she can. At one point, her husband even referred to her as "little girl" which showed that he felt that he was more mature and in control of what she could and couldn't do. She later begins to develop a hatred for the wallpaper and begins to see a woman behind the wallpaper.  This showed containment and restraint. When the woman begins taking the wallpaper off of the wall, this shows the woman in the wallpaper being set free. In the grand scheme, it represented women breaking free from men. When this happens she begins to feel free as well and this causes John to feel fear and faint. I think this represented the impact that the woman's rights movement had on men. They were caught off guard because they saw it as they had their own roles as women had theirs and men never realized how much restriction was placed on the role of women in comparison to the role that men played on society. The windows in the room showed the freedom that women could tell they weren't quite able to reach, as far as they knew. Outside of the window were beautiful flowers, walkways, people, and other nature.  This all seemed very appealing to the narrator and symbolized freedom and independence for women but it was overlooked by the woman until she realized how plain and painful being trapped in the wallpaper felt. The windows were less abundant than the walls in which she was trapped. This symbolised the fact that women saw and noticed the freedom that they could feel but also that it was a lot harder to see and pursue the windows or feedom surrounded by the restrictions set by men on women or the walls.