The Representation of Patriarchal Control and Women’s Mental Health in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper: A Feminist Literary Analysis

Abstract

This study is a critical analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman using the feminist literary lens to understand how patriarchal domination was depicted and the effect of that on the mental health of females. Three major goals of the analysis are to explore how the authority of patriarchy is portrayed by the protagonist through confinement and silencing; to explore the psychological effects of such oppression on the well-being of the women; to discuss the symbolic elements which criticize the medical and social practices practiced by men. The method used for this research is qualitative method. Through textual evidence and backed by the more recent feminist theories, the paper demonstrates that it is not the natural weakness of the narrator that has led: to madness but instead the systemic level of patriarchal oppression through domestic subjugation, medical paternalism and cultural suppression. Wallpaper and the figure, who is incarcerated inside it, are the main symbols of entrapment and resistance and they represent destructive power of patriarchal control as well as the subversive power of rebellion. Placing the text into the context of the medical matters of the nineteenth century, as well as the modern-day discussions about gender and mental health conditions, this study emphasizes the timelessness of the work by Gilman in raising the question of the intersections between literature, psychology, and social commentary.