The Yellow Wallpaper Critical Analysis

Critical Synthesis: Discourse on “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story that has generated numerous scholarly conversations of literary criticism. Joyce Kinkead’s “Recommended: Charlotte Perkins Gilman”, Jane F. Thrailkill’s “Doctoring “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Gillian Brown’s “The Empire of Agoraphobia” all address the life of the narrator while differing in the aspect of her place in society. Ideas of feminism, psychology, and agoraphobia are addressed through these criticisms of “The Yellow Wallpaper.” They translate together that the woman in the patriarchal culture of America is constantly hated and dismissed. Preconceived to be hysterical, a symbol of domestic value, and lacking of self-identity is the narrator. Joyce Kinkead’s “Recommended: Charlotte Perkins Gilman” develops the feminist …show more content…
In a period of time that is Victorian there is a standard of high morality and prudishness. The paradigm of selfhood associated in “The Yellow Wallpaper” translates to the experience of the wife only having a sense of self when in the household. This domestic ideology designs the woman’s purpose in and only in the household. This disabling of the woman becomes the catalyst for the agoraphobia depicted in the story. The narrator mentions her husband’s sister is content with the profession of a housekeeper. The narrator feels otherwise and would rather write; but hides the action of writing in the presence of her husband. The narrator detests the room due to the grotesque wallpaper and avoids going in unless instructed by her husband. Her husband laughs at her disapproval of the wallpaper. The woman begins to have delusions, creating mental images of abstract shape and even another woman. Her husband believes there is nothing wrong with her health but insists she recuperate as to maintain his “rest