BARBOSA, A. P. H.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/0611404479709721; BARBOSA, Ana Paula Herculano.
Abstract:
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in 1892 and written by the American
writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has gained notoriety since its publication until the present
moment. In the last decade of the 19th century, readers were captivated by the aura of terror
and mystery that surrounded Gilman's narrative. In the second half of the 20th century, the
short story was revisited by feminist criticism, for being the story of a woman who, subject to
her husband, is isolated on a rural property without contact with other people, so that she can
be treated for her nervous pathology. In this new ambiance, the protagonist narrator ends up
spending most of her time in the nursery, on the top floor of the house, and this space is
dominated by the yellow wallpaper, an element that entitled the short story, revealing how
important it is. The yellow wallpaper ends up becoming the object to which the protagonist
narrator dedicates all her attention, due to the intellectual leisure imposed on her during the
treatment. In the three-month period in which she is isolated on the property, her relationship
with the wallpaper deepens, and if she initially harbored a certain disgust with it, then she
watches over it for hours and avoids leaving the nursery due to its powerful influence. When
noting the prominent place that such an element of composition occupies in this short story,
we perceive the study of space in this narrative as a fertile ground for the development of our
research. Thus, our objective is to analyze the relationship between the construction of the
narrative space and the psychic state of the protagonist narrator of the short story “The
Yellow Wallpaper”. To this end, we carried out a bibliographic study to verify the historical
and literary context of the work's production from Cincotta (1994), Reidhead (2017) and
Vanspanckeren (1994). To carry out the analysis of space we rely on the concepts of
Bachelard (1978), Osman Lins (1976), Dimas (1987) and Borges Filho (2008). The essay by
Antonio Candido, entitled Degradação do espaço: Estudo sôbre a correlaçãofuncionaldos
ambientes, das coisas e do comportamento em L’Assommoir (2006), helped us in the
selection of the analytical categories of this work (the garden, the house, the room and the
yellow wallpaper). Finally, in order to study the symbolic elements linked to the narrative
space, we used Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1996). Regarding critical feminist studies, we rely
on Showalter (1991; 2009a; 2009b), Felman (1975) and Gilbert and Gubar (2000). Upon
concluding our analysis, we verify the fundamental place that space occupies in the
construction and development of this narrative. In Gilman's short story, space is not used
merely as a point of reference for geographical location, space shares the central role with the
protagonist narrator, in such a way that, if the space were changed or ceased to exist, the
narrative action would not develop.