The narrator believed that a woman is trapped behind the wallpaper. The woman is the representation of her repressed self being trapped in it. The domestic world had made her the prisoner. She had silently submitted her to the household chores which has made her live in the domestic prison. The pattern of the wallpaper makes her realize how far she had been a prison in such a lifestyle. The shaking and the crawling of the wallpaper are symbolic of her being trapped inside it.
