The Yellow Wallpaper: A Feminist Analysis

Immediately in Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the female narrator mentions to us that her husband “John is a physician, and perhaps –– (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind –– perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Stetson 1892, 647). Indeed, readers are able to observe that there is tension because of what the narrator wants to say. For John, this statement clearly indicates that science triumphs over the fantasy of religion. Therefore, John intellectually dominates his wife as a result of his opinion. The reading of literature is creative and inventive. Attridge believes that, “invention is never a matter of creation ex nihilo; it is
Feminist critics invented the word “gynocritics,” which was “developed shoulder-to-shoulder with the Female Aesthetic, attempted to resolve some of these problems, by agreeing that women's literature lay as the central concern for feminist criticism, but rejected the concept of an essential female identity and style” (Showalter 1981, 185). In other words, critics have started to accept and admire feminist literature. On the other hand, readers have also started perceive feminist literature for what they are, rather than compare them to men’s literature, because of the word gynocritics. According to Showalter, writers like “Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson, emerging out of the Victorian period and influenced by its writings were perhaps the first women to recognize this” (Showalter 1981, 188). That is to say, feminist critics rely on female aesthetic as an element of their work, in order to for readers to understand the purpose of feminine traditions in literature. In order to accept feminist literature, one needs to understand the elements the works contain, as well as the elusive nature of feminism. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator expresses a need for independence by becoming inspiring her own happiness to write, due to the distraction of the
In “The Story of an Hour, readers are able to observe that Mrs. Mallard finds happiness out of her husband’s death and struggles with guilt. In the end, Mrs. Mallard overcomes it by having a heart attack. Showalter explains that the theoretical model of culture, “incorporates ideas about women’s body, language and psyche, but interprets them in relation to the social contexts in which they occur” (Showalter 1981, 197). As a result, cultural theory “acknowledges that there are important differences between women as writers: class, race nationality, and history are literary determinants as significant as gender. Nonetheless, women’s culture forms a collective experience within the cultural whole, an experience that binds women writers to each other over time and space” (Showalter 1981, 197). Again, women’s writing should not be perceived as a double-voice discourse. Feminist literature should be accepted for what it is and should not be ruled biological or culturally incline. Therefore, both readers and critics need to accept women’s writing as our primary subject forces us to make the leap to a new conceptual vantage point and to redefine the nature of the theoretical problem before