What Is The Feminist Criticism Of The Yellow Wallpaper

In The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it is evident that the female narrator is a victim of her patriarchal surroundings. In the short story, the persona is diagnosed with depression by her controlling physician of a husband and eventually becomes psychotic as a direct result of her husband’s idea of a ‘cure’. As a story, the yellow wall paper has been criticized using various lenses including the psychological, sociological and even the biological. According to Tyson, “feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women”. (Tyson, 83) Therefore the most appropriate lens to use when critiquing The Yellow Wall Paper is indeed feminism. When reading the story readers are posed with the ever relevant concept of which came first the chicken or the egg. Basically as is the case of the chicken and the egg it is simply a matter of perspective. In this story readers see that the author’s biography, the society and psychology all play major roles in the development of the story, however, as with the chicken and the egg, feminism is the unifying element that allow these concepts to be portrayed. The fact that the writer was a woman and the society’s views on women are what allowed her to be placed in the situation to write the story.

In Perkins work readers see how limited the main character’s freedom is. She describes her entrapment and