Power Politics in Marriage and Medical Attitudes in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Ruhr-University of Bochum (Englisches Seminar), course: Women’s Literature: From Anti-Slavery to Economic Independence, language: English, abstract: In my paper I would like to examine how Gilman’s 19th century short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" engages with the power politics of marriage and the medical attitudes towards women in the 19th-century U.S. society. I would like to argue that in Gilman’s autobiographical story, the female protagonist, who undergoes the rest cure, escapes from the oppression through the patriarchal institutions of marriage and medicine in search of personal and intellectual independence. The realist narrative provides peculiar imagery that depicts the idea of a power structure regulated by male authority and women’s subordinate position in society. My purpose here is to give a brief insight into medical care in the 19th century but also to portray the depression and the treatment Gilman herself underwent. In doing so I would like to reflect on Gilman’s motivation for writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” and to reconstruct the social context by calling into question her nonfictional work “The Man-Made World”. The main part of my investigation will cover the analysis of the short story with the main focus being/put on the key trope, in which I will proceed chronologically. Finally, my inquiry will close with pointing out the main achievements and effects the short story had on contemporary society and readership.