Question

What does the wallpaper in the yellow wallpaper symbolize?

Answer 1

As for symbolic actions, the narrator's tearing down the wallpaper in an attempt to find the "woman" in the wallpaper represents her struggle to retain or regain her sanity.  The wallpaper has been part of her confinement and by her tearing it down, she is freeing herself from that confinement.

Another symbol is the narrator's writings in her notebook and the notebook itself.  Both represent the narrator's attempt to have normalcy and sanity during this

Answer 2

Gilman uses the description of the wallpaper to symbolize the havoc within the mind of a woman undergoing the rest cure. The narrator of the “The Yellow Wallpaper” perceives the wallpaper as a riddle that she must decipher. The narrator spends many days trying to interpret the “changing” patterns on the wallpaper. At first, the wallpaper is an “unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” and “dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.” With the passage of time, she sees the wallpaper start disintegrating and decaying, which symbolizes her own crumbling sanity. Her final mental breakdown is exhibited when, at the end of the story, she rips off the wallpaper, attempting to free the woman trapped inside: “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.”