Answer:
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which was published in 1892. The narration tells us about a woman (the main narrator) whose loving husband John, a physician, takes them both to a mansion home where the two of them are to stay during the summer months until she gets better from her "depressive" condition, as her husband says it. The two end up establishing themselves not on the first floor for the house, but rather on the second-floor nursery room because, according to John, it has all the conditions that are necessary for his wife to heal. Apart from the opennes, airiness and the amount of windows on the place where John basically locks his wife, we are told of two pretty unique features; the first, that all the windows are barred and the walls have interspersed rings in them, and also, that the room is papered with a yellow pattern that at first the narrator hates for its color and design, but that soon becomes the center of attention, and the main driver of the events that develop in the story.
It must be remembered that the narrator liked to write, and according to John had too much of a creative imagination that could be the reason why she was always tired and sick. As the story progressses the color of the paper, and the pattern of it, go from being a symbol of domestication and tradition for women (the case of the narrator being a wife and not being allowed to be anything else), to becoming a mysterious place where the narrator finds almost an alternative universe where a woman, much like her, seeks to break free of that traditional and standardized pattern. So, the answer to the questions would be:
1. No, the color and the pattern were the symbol of what was expected of women, of tradition and eestablished roles in society. If this pattern had been changed, then maybe the narrator would not have grown interested in studying beyond what she at first hated to find what lay beneath.
2. The wallpaper is described by the narrator as hideous, and in pretty bad shape, almost dirty and mistreated. Then, she starts to analyze it more and more and realize that that which at first she hated has now become appealing and interesting to her. It is the color yellow, and the shabbiness of the paper that first invites the narrator to try and look beyond that ugliness to find what lies beneath. This is why sets off the events of the story. So again the color could not have changed.
