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The Yellow Wallpaper Feminist Analysis Essay

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Gender Theory of "The Yellow Wallpaper"

"The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short story often regarded as a feminist classic. Because of this, critics tend to analyze the text through the perspective of a gender theorist. This critical lens is additionally relevant in that, it helps to exhibit examples of subtle misogyny that was common in the time the work was written, while at the same time showing how it was still very feminist for its time period. Specifically, one can find that the unnamed narrator of the short story succumbs to madness as a result of being too heavily oppressed by the patriarchal society in which she resides. One can also find that the author intended to make a feminist statement in writing "The…show more content…
So, using gender theory in evaluating it is an essential part of understanding it. "'The Yellow Wall-Paper' appears to be a text that simultaneously mirrors Gilman's ideological limitations as a feminist reformer and symbolically moves beyond those limitations."(Hume). Through gender critical analysis one can find that Gilman "moves beyond those limitations" by framing the story in a horrifying, insanity-inducing manner that causes its reader to emphasize with the oppressed. In a world ran by fifty percent of the population, Gilman dared to put her thoughts on the front line through this tale, and the world may even be better off for…show more content…
"Managing Madness in Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-Paper.'." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Kathy D. Darrow, vol. 228, Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 1 June 2017. Originally published in Studies in American Fiction, vol. 30, no. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 3-20.

Lanser, Susan S. "Feminist Criticism, 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' and the Politics of Color in America." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 201, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 1 June 2017. Originally published in Feminist Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, Fall 1989, pp. 415-441.

Thomas, Heather Kirk. "'[A] Kind of Debased Romanesque with Delirium Tremens': Late-Victorian Wall Coverings and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'." Short Story Criticism, edited by Janet Witalec, vol. 62, Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 1 June 2017. Originally published in The Mixed Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Catherine J. Golden and Joanna Schneider Zangrando, University of Delaware Press, 2000, pp.
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