Volume VI Special Issue I January 2026

Name of Author : Bharti Yadav, Dr. Shrutimita Mehta, Dr. Divyabha Vashisth

Title of the paper : Echoes Behind the Pattern: Feminist Insurgency and Psychological Confinement in The Yellow Wallpaper

Abstract: Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper presents a feminist perspective through a psychological lens, as a woman narrates the events that lead to her descent into madness. The story explores how society equates women with nervous depression, treating it as a burden, a tool for suppression, an object to confine, and a justification to deny women the roles they desire. The narrator, confined to a colonial Gothic mansion for a rest cure during postpartum depression, gradually loses her sanity and becomes a captive of her own mind. This paper examines how institutions controlled individuals, particularly women, during the Victorian era and how the society silenced womens intellect and blocked all forms of expression, including writing. Using Michel Foucaults theory of discipline and power, the paper exposes how both medical and domestic spaces were used for surveillance and regulation that enforced subjugation of women in the name of care. The narrator becomes delusional, and she actively rebels by creeping over the floor, demonstrating how silence and madness serve as radical means of resistance.

Keywords : Madness, Patriarchy, Resistance, psychology, rest cure

DOI :

Page Number : 136-140