A mulher no conto O Papel de Parede Amarelo: cerceamento e relação de poder.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the representation of women in the short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through the feminist theory and criticism. At a time when women were even more subject to patriarchal rules, Gilman used her short story as a tool of denunciation and social criticism against the conditions of female repression and oppression. The short story The Yellow Wallpaper is considered, by the feminist criticism, a work that deals with the devaluation of the literary production written by women and the feminine imprisonment before the medical authority, marriage, and maternity. This study provides an analysis of the power relations between the heroine protagonist and the other characters in view of the conditions and behaviors related to the role of women in the patriarchal society. It also intends to show the incursions of the protagonist as a female subversive figure before an oppressive reality. It is a bibliographical study and to guide such discussions, the theoretical support of Woolf (1990), Badinter (1985), Rohden (2001), among others, is used. The research, finally, recognizes in Gilman's protagonist a transgressive woman of the social standard of her time, but unable to do otherwise, finds in the madness, the "liberation" of the bonds of a system that conditions her.