Thus, the woman becomes her jailer through self-shaming. In particular, Cixous describes the idea of men creating “antinarcissism” for women and asserts that a woman typically shames herself for experiencing various urges (creative or sexual) (1455). The question of how a woman can become an enemy to herself can also be explained in the light of Cixous’ work, and it is connected to the topic of shame and inferiority. By the end of the work, the narrator assumes a different personality, and the previous one becomes the stranger and also the enemy. It can be assumed that it is her name or the name of the personality she abandons when she identifies herself as the woman who comes out of the bars of the wallpaper. However, the final phrase that the narrator addresses to her husband refers to getting out “despite you and Jane,” and while the narrator is never named, there is no Jane mentioned in the book either (Gilman 371). Indeed, the narrator refuses to acknowledge her, which manifests in her suppressing her feelings at the beginning of the novel and proceeding to remind herself to control her “silly fancies” throughout the story (Gilman 365). A similar topic appears in Gilman’s work: the reader might understand the nature of the woman behind bars before the narrator, but for the narrator, this woman is a stranger. Cixous describes it as the process of a woman returning “to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display” (1457). Thus, the only way to express her thoughts is to keep a diary, which she seizes and keeps secret.Īpart from that, Cixous regards writing as a means to grow to understand oneself. His opinion is more important for friends, relatives, and society, and the narrator is helpless to change this fact. Moreover, he attempts to manipulate her into silence by blackmailing her with his happiness and the happiness of their child (Gilman 366). Gilman’s narrator is silenced by her husband and physician who does not believe that she is sick and does not listen to her opinion of her experiences (359). Writing is regarded as the means to become visible by “seizing the occasion to speak” (Cixous 1457). In my understanding, the key point of Cixous’ work is to urge women to discover their voice through writing, which they can use to reclaim their selves and their bodies and make them known to the phallocentric world (1455). As for the bars that hold her, one of them is the habit of silencing her, which can be described in detail with the help of Cixous’ essay. Given her secondary position in her family, it appears to me that her insanity gives her an insight into the truth that she is afraid to admit. Eventually, she believes that she is that woman, tears the paper away, and starts hallucinating more creeping women. As the illness progresses, the narrator begins to discern a strange pattern in the yellow wallpaper of her room: a woman who is “creeping” behind bars. The therapy appears to be harmful since the woman has the urge to write and create while the “cure” prohibits intellectual or social activities. In “The Yellow Paper,” a woman who has a mental illness is driven to insanity by the therapy that her husband uses despite her complaints that it is ineffective. Apart from that, even after the self is shattered, it is preserved in the form of a literary work, which implies that the woman’s writing proceeds to serve as an enabler of the woman’s voice. Admittedly, she damages and, possibly, shatters the self in the process, but this aspect of the novel can be explained by the notion of “antinarcissism” that is introduced by Cixous (1455). First, it can be proved that the diary performs the functions of helping the narrator to understand her self and reclaim it from her silencing jailers. In particular, I argue that the narrator of “The Yellow Paper” tries and partially succeeds to gain a voice by keeping a secret diary, which becomes visible when the terminology and ideas of Cixous are applied to the novel. The present paper includes a short description of the two works and their analysis. The topic of a woman’s voice being silenced by society and becoming heard in writing appears to be among the similar themes of the critical essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” by Cixous and the novel “The Yellow Paper” by Gilman.
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