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Feminist literary theory looks at how women are represented in literature, and how stories reflect or challenge gender inequality. It focuses on the way social and political systems, especially patriarchy (male-dominated power structures), affect women’s lives, voices, and freedom.

“Feminist criticism explores the way literary texts reflect, reinforce or challenge gender ideologies and hierarchies.” (TCL Module 2–2025)

In many stories from the 19th and 20th centuries, women characters are often shown as:

Emotionally unstable,

Dependent on men,

Trapped in the home,

And punished if they resist these roles.

Feminist theory helps us question these situations and ask:

Who has power in the story?

Whose voice is heard, and whose is silenced?

Is the female character free to make her own choices?

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Psychoanalytic theory comes from the ideas of Sigmund Freud. It helps us understand how the unconscious mind (the part of the mind we’re not aware of) influences what characters feel and do. It looks at:

Repression (pushing painful feelings away)

Projection (putting inner fears onto outside things)

Dreams, symbols, and hallucinations as signs of inner conflict

Freud said that when people suppress their feelings, those feelings often come back in strange forms — like dreams, obsessions, or madness.

Julia Kristeva, another psychoanalytic thinker, says that mental illness in literature often shows a conflict between what society demands (the symbolic) and what the body or emotions want (the semiotic). The narrator’s breakdown shows this inner conflict. She becomes the woman in the wallpaper — both trapped and trying to escape.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) is a powerful short story about a woman’s descent into madness. On the surface, it seems like a tale of psychological horror, but when read through feminist and psychoanalytic frameworks, the story reveals a deeper critique of gender roles, mental health, and power in 19th-century society. This analysis explores how feminist theory and psychoanalysis transform our understanding of the story’s meaning, especially regarding the narrator’s identity, her confinement, and her eventual breakdown.

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Feminist literary theory focuses on how literature reflects or challenges the oppression of women. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is controlled by her husband John, who is physician and the authority figure. Feminist theory helps us see how John's treatment of his wife symbolizes the broader patriarchal system that silences and limits women's autonomy.

“John is a physician, and perhaps… that is one reason I do not get well faster.” (Gilman 1)

This line shows how the medical establishment, represented by John, denies women's voices and experiences. This also reflects what feminist theorists like Showalter argue — that women’s illnesses were often “dismissed or misdiagnosed as emotional weakness” under patriarchal science. The narrator is diagnosed with a “temporary nervous depression”, reflecting 19th-century views that associated femininity with fragility and irrationality.

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3. Feminist Theory: Women’s Mental Health and the “Rest Cure”

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3. Feminist Theory: Women’s Mental Health and the “Rest Cure”

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The story also critiques the historical treatment of women’s mental illness. The narrator’s enforced isolation and lack of stimulation reflect the real-life “rest cure” prescribed by Dr. Weir Mitchell. Also, it's a treatment that Gilman herself experienced and later criticized in essays.

The woman in the story wants to write, go outside, and choose her own room, but she is constantly denied. Her needs are labeled as irrational or childish.

“John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired” (Gilman 1)

Feminist criticism shows that this so-called treatment is actually a form of oppression, meant to suppress a woman’s independence and intellect. Instead of helping her recover, the rest cure pushes the narrator toward madness. This process exposes the violence hidden behind so-called care.

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Have you heard of the “Rest Cure” What about the “West Cure” Follow the link in our bio to watch the full video on YouTube and learn more about these 19th century treatments for depression. #breakingdownpatriarc

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The house, and especially the nursery room, functions as a metaphor for the domestic sphere that limits women’s lives. The narrator is forbidden to write, express herself, or even take decisions.

“Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman 1)

These restrictions mirror the ways women were expected to stay within certain social boundaries and their lack of control of their life choices.

Feminist theory, particularly as explained in Module 4, challenges the ideological structures (like marriage and medicine) that enforce gender roles. The wallpaper in the story, with its ugly, chaotic patterns, symbolizes the narrator’s growing frustration and her attempt to escape from this ideological prison.

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In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is placed on the rest cure by her husband, John, who is also her doctor. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this treatment does the opposite of what the mind needs:

It forces the narrator to repress her emotions and thoughts.

She is told not to write, which was her only creative outlet.

Her inner world becomes chaotic because her feelings and needs are ignored.

As Freud might say, when repressed desires cannot be expressed in healthy ways, they return in strange forms—hallucinations, obsession, or madness. That is exactly what happens when the narrator begins to see a woman in the wallpaper.

“He says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition” (Gilman 2)

This is a key psychoanalytic moment: John (and the cure) teaches her to ignore her reality, which causes a split in her psyche and eventually leads to her breakdown.

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Psychoanalytic criticism, based on the theories of Freud, Lacan, and others, focuses on the unconscious mind, repression, and symbolic meaning. Applying this lens to The Yellow Wallpaper allows us to understand the narrator’s breakdown as a symbolic expression of repressed desires and fears.

This trapped woman is a projection of the narrator’s own repressed self. According to Julia Kristeva, madness in literature often represents a rupture between the symbolic order (society) and the semiotic (inner drives). As the narrator loses her social identity, her semiotic expression comes through hallucination and writing

“It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.” (Gilman 6)

This “creeping woman” is a representation of the narrator’s repressed self—a self that wants freedom, autonomy, and expression. As described in Module 4, psychoanalysis reveals how literature shows the return of the repressed—and in this story, that return is violent, chaotic, and ultimately transformative.

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7. Psychoanalysis: Symbolism of the Wallpaper

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7. Psychoanalysis: Symbolism of the Wallpaper

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The wallpaper acts as a "text" that the narrator tries to decode, just like how psychoanalysts interpret dreams. Its confusing, ugly pattern represents her disturbed psyche. The woman trapped behind it is her alter ego, a symbol of her unconscious mind trying to surface. As she becomes more obsessed with the wallpaper, she loses her grip on reality.

“I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.” (Gilman 8)

This moment of tearing down the wallpaper is symbolic of breaking through repression, but it also represents the collapse of her rational self. Her madness is not just a personal failure but the result of a society that denies women their subjectivity.

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While feminism focuses on the social and political structures of oppression, psychoanalysis helps us understand the internal psychological effects. In The Yellow Wallpaper we can see:

The patriarchal control over the narrator causes psychological repression.

Her lack of voice in the marriage becomes an internal silence, pushing her toward psychosis.

The final scene, where she identifies with the woman in the wallpaper, is both a feminist rebellion and a psychoanalytic breakdown.

“I’ve got out at last… And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman 9)

This can be read in two ways:

As a triumphant declaration of freedom (feminist lens), where the narrator escapes symbolic imprisonment.

Or as a complete psychotic break (psychoanalytic lens), where she loses her identity and merges with her hallucination.

This dual reading reveals the richness of the text and how literary theory can uncover multiple meanings.

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By using feminist theory and psychoanalysis, we can see The Yellow Wallpaper not just as a personal story of madness, but as a critique of a whole system—a system that defines women as fragile, emotional, and incapable of rational thought. Feminist theory shows how the narrator is oppressed by patriarchal structures, while psychoanalysis explores how that oppression affects her inner world.

The story becomes a symbol of women's struggle for identity, voice, and freedom, and a warning about the psychological dangers of denying women agency.

Reading Gilman’s text through these lenses deepens our understanding and invites us to reflect on the historical and ongoing battles for gender equality and mental health awareness.