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Feminist Ctiticism in The Yellow Wallpaper
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Feminist Ctiticism in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Perkins Gilmans "The Yellow Wallpaper" has been interpreted in many ways over the years. Modernist critics have applied depth psychology to the story and written about the symbolism of sexual repression in the nursery bars, the chained-down bed, and the wallpaper. Genre critics have discussed the story as an example of supernatural gothic fiction, in which a ghost actually haunts the narrator. But most importantly, feminist critics discovered the story in the 1970s and interpreted it as a critique of a society that subjugated women into the role of wife and mother and repressed them so much that all they could ever hope to be was an "angel in the house." Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports societys patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. The Yellow Wallpaper depicts one womens struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction to this act. From the beginning of this work, the woman is shown to have gone mad. We are given no insight into the past, and we do not know why she has...
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