The nineteenth century was in love with duality. A strict separation between the public and the private spheres, that at the same time meant sharply separated spheres of action for men and women, is only one expression of the general be-lief in fixed binary oppositions that characterized both American and British so-ciety in the Victorian era. Since the innate and natural difference between man and woman, as the most compelling duality, was similarly taken for granted, ni-neteenth-century society was also structured and determined by a rigid gender-role differentiation. It should hardly surprise us, then, that writings of the mid- to late-nineteenth century are especially preoccupied with the motif of the double. While this fasci-nation with double figures could on the one hand be accounted for with the Victo-rian belief in the essential duality of life, the motif’s proliferation in works written at the turn of the century may also be interpreted as a symptom of the cultural transformation that dominated this era. In America, especially, the rapid growth of the nation following the Reconstruction period, together with the ensuing technological revolution, the rise of industrial capitalism, and the subsequent emergence of new social classes brought about a climate of change that stimulated both anxiety and expectation. These conflicting impulses contributed to a general feeling of fragmentation that, in literature, could best be expressed with the characters’ self-division or self-duplication (cf. Miyoshi ix-xix). Grave anxieties, however, were also prompted by the changes women sought, for rigid gender lines were feared to dissolve by the 1880s with women’s nascent emancipation and the emergence of the so-called ‘new woman.’ While political oratory and journalism had by then become an important factor in American society of the time, fe-male orators speaking out for equal rights, though growing in numbers, were still regarded an anomaly up until much later (cf. Levander 1-11).
Contents
1 Introduction
2 The Motif of the Double in Literature
2.1 Definition and History
2.2 Forms and Functions
3 Different Perspectives on the Same Disease – Fragmented Selves in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and The Bostonians
3.1 Sane Femininity according to a Nineteenth Century Worldview
3.2 Patriarchal Diagnosis and Cure
3.2.1 Medical Diagnosis, Male Anxiety and the Rest Cure in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
3.2.2 Male Anxieties and the Silencing Cure in The Bostonians
3.3 Women’s Hushed Voices
3.3.1 The Female Self Torn between Imperatives and Desires in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
3.3.2 Incomplete Female Selves in The Bostonians
3.4 The Unreliable Narrator – A Third Perspective?
4 ‘Together they would be complete’ – Female Self-therapy in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Bostonians
4.1 Discovery of the Other Self in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
4.2 Seizure of the Missing Self in The Bostonians
4.3 Dubious Victory in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
4.4 Triumph in Disguise in The Bostonians
5 Conclusion
Research Objectives and Themes
This thesis examines the representation of fragmented female selves and their attempts at self-therapy through the motif of the double in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Henry James’s The Bostonians, exploring how these women confront patriarchal suppression and medical pathologization.
- The impact of nineteenth-century patriarchal medical discourse on women’s self-perception.
- The emergence of the "speaking woman" and the hysterical woman as sociocultural phenomena.
- The literary use of the doppelgänger motif as a psychological projection of repressed desires.
- The struggle for agency and voice within rigid Victorian gender ideologies.
- The potential for female self-empowerment and integration through complementary personal relationships.
Excerpt from the Book
3.2.1 Medical Diagnosis, Male Anxiety and the Rest Cure in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story chronicles the fate of a woman who is prescribed a “rest cure” to treat her nervous depression. The narrator-protagonist accounts for her thoughts and feelings during her summer stay at a colonial mansion in twelve undated diary entries. Her husband, who is a doctor, confines her to a room she dislikes and does not want her to write or engage in any other expressive activity. The woman increasingly becomes obsessed with the wallpaper that covers her room and begins to discern a female figure behind the wallpaper’s pattern. After several days of observing the imaginary figure, the narrator locks herself in the room, tears down the wallpaper, and crawls around the floor, a state her husband sees her in when he finally enters the room. The story closes with the man’s fainting and the woman creeping repeatedly over his fallen body.
Given its first-person narrative situation and its diary format, the story might lend itself to a highly subjective and one-dimensional representation of the heroine’s situation. However, we are to learn very soon that the narrator’s own judgments, at least during the first entries, actually play a minor role, while the dominating perspective seems to be the masculine one. In fact, her husband’s dominant presence in the narrator’s life as well as in her thoughts becomes evident right from the beginning when she introduces three successive paragraphs with “John”:
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps – (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind - ) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
Summary of Chapters
1 Introduction: Provides a contextual overview of nineteenth-century duality and the emerging motif of the double in literature as a symptom of cultural and gender-related anxieties.
2 The Motif of the Double in Literature: Defines the historical development and psychological functions of the doppelgänger motif, ranging from physical twins to internal split personalities.
3 Different Perspectives on the Same Disease – Fragmented Selves in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and The Bostonians: Analyzes the patriarchal medical discourse regarding sanity and femininity, focusing on how male protagonists attempt to silence women through diagnosis and prescribed domestic confinement.
4 ‘Together they would be complete’ – Female Self-therapy in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Bostonians: Explores how the female protagonists unconsciously use the double as a tool for self-therapy, projecting repressed desires onto foil figures to achieve psychic wholeness and self-assertion.
5 Conclusion: Synthesizes the analysis, concluding that both works portray the quest for voice and identity as a necessary, albeit painful, process of breaking away from patriarchal definitions of womanhood.
Keywords
Doppelgänger, The Yellow Wall-Paper, The Bostonians, patriarchal discourse, hysteria, fragmentation, self-therapy, gender roles, Victorian era, female voice, self-empowerment, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry James, split personality, identity.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the central focus of this research?
The research investigates how female protagonists in two specific nineteenth-century texts navigate patriarchal structures that define their attempts at independence as pathological, and how they utilize psychological doubling to reclaim their own voices.
What are the primary themes analyzed?
The central themes include the medicalization of femininity, the conflict between individual desire and social duty, the nature of the "speaking woman" in the public sphere, and the therapeutic function of the internal "double."
What is the core research question?
The work explores how female characters in these narratives attempt to overcome their internal fragmentation and lack of a public voice by externalizing repressed aspects of themselves through the doppelgänger motif.
Which methodology does the author employ?
The author uses a literary-analytical approach, incorporating psychoanalytical concepts (including Freudian and Lacanian theories) to interpret how characters manage self-division and resistance against gender-based constraints.
What is addressed in the main body of the text?
The main body examines the historical and cultural contexts of hysteria, the male-dominated power of medical diagnosis, and the specific ways in which the female characters in both books attempt to bridge the gap between their "conforming" and "rebellious" selves.
Which keywords best describe this study?
Key terms include: Doppelgänger, hysteria, fragmentation, self-therapy, patriarchal discourse, and gender-role deviation.
How does the narrator of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” use the wallpaper as a tool?
The narrator initially finds the pattern repulsive, but eventually perceives it as a mirror of her own repressed desires for independence, allowing her to externalize her forbidden self and eventually break free from the constraints of her husband’s medical "care."
What makes the relationship between Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant in The Bostonians unique?
Their relationship functions as a complementary union where both women perceive each other as the missing part of their own fragmented identities, effectively merging "mind" and "body" to challenge patriarchal expectations.
- Citation du texte
- Eva Maria Krehl (Auteur), 2008, ‘Together they would be complete’ Female Doubles in C. P. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and H. James’s "The Bostonians", Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/117846
