Images and Madness in The Yellow Wallpaper One of the main themes in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is that isolation and exclusion from the public lead to madness. The use of imagery and settings helps illustrate this theme throughout the story. The unnamed protagonist of this story suffers from a nervous disorder that is aggravated by the sensation of being trapped in a room. The setting of the vast colonial villa and in particular the children's room with the barred windows provides an image of loneliness and isolation experienced by the protagonist. Another significant environment is the villa connected by a "shaded alley" (66) to the beautiful bay and the private pier. It is possible that in her mind she sees a path that leads to the cure of her illness where happiness and good health await her in the end. The reason the lane is "shaded" is because she is not sure whether or not this road is safe to travel on. After moving into the mansion, she immediately becomes obsessed with the nursery's wallpaper with "sprawling, gaudy patterns that commit every artistic sin" (64). His days and nights are so peaceful that he finds relief in writing a diary that becomes increasingly boring as his illness progresses. In each paragraph of his diary, he analyzes the wallpaper. Through the images she evokes from the wallpaper, one can see that she is actually unconsciously analyzing herself and her illness. For example, he begins to see "a strange, provocative, shapeless figure, which seems to hide behind that silly and garish frontal design" (67). He describes his illness (as seen in the wallpaper) as "not organized according to any law of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else I have ever heard of" (68). In other words, he can't make sense of what is causing his illness. A crucial moment in the story is when the female protagonist only cares about the yellow wallpaper in her diary. In place of his obsession with the wallpaper, he engages in the actions of the women he sees on the wallpaper which, of course, are actually his own actions. The woman “continually tries to climb through [the wallpaper]” (72). Right now, she is desperately trying to escape her illness, but she can't because her confinement in the room has already affected her more than she realizes. The image of this situation is described when "the drawing strangles [the women], turns them upside down and turns their eyes white!" (72). Eventually, or on his last day in the mansion, the isolation intensifies his illness to the point that it is no longer treatable and madness takes over. The protagonist finally acknowledges the fact that the women she witnesses are indeed her state of mind and proclaims "I'll have to get back behind the pattern when the night comes, and that's hard!" (75). She believes she has finally freed herself from the disease when in reality exactly the opposite happened. The incessant crawling is the final synthesis of his madness.