The Yellow Wallpaper: Childbirth, Madness and Patriarchy

The article examines Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper as a foundational feminist text that represents women’s psychological suffering within a patriarchal medical and social order. Using the journal-like narrative structure, it traces the gradual mental breakdown of the unnamed narrator and relates it to Gilman’s own experience with post-partum illness. Close attention is paid to symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the barred room, and the fixed bed, which transform domestic space into a site of confinement and surveillance. The analysis shows how the narrator’s final act of defiance unsettles rigid gender binaries and challenges nineteenth-century assumptions about women, sanity, and authority.