What does the narrator think of yellow wallpaper?

The narrator of the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman has a complex and evolving view of the yellow wallpaper in her room. Initially, she finds it ugly and oppressive, describing it as "unbearable," "smouldering," and "a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others." She also becomes fixated on a pattern in the wallpaper that resembles women creeping behind bars, which she interprets as a symbol of her own confinement and oppression.

As the story progresses, the narrator's obsession with the wallpaper grows, and she begins to see herself as one of the women in the pattern. She feels a kinship with them, as they seem to represent her own repressed desires and frustrations. At the end of the story, the narrator has completely lost her grasp on reality and believes that she has become one of the women in the wallpaper, crawling on all fours and tearing it off the walls.

In this way, the yellow wallpaper becomes a symbol of the narrator's mental and emotional decline, reflecting her descent into madness as she struggles against the societal constraints and limitations placed on women of her time.