Hysteric Woman: A Study on The Yellow Wallpaper

“I’m sitting by the window in this atrocious nursery”

Abstract

In an unquestionably patriarchal society, women who dissent, who had a voice of her own, one with strong affiliations towards social change were labelled as hysteric and mad. Their symptoms were thoughtfulness, deviation from social behavior, tendency to shout and express one’s emotion, even getting angry were considered as symptoms of hysteria. A hysteric woman is a hopeless woman, the lost one; who needs to be locked up in an attic. The men had two extreme approaches towards these conditions. They either treated women as fragile beings, who need to be cared and nurtured under the protection of men. Or they termed “women with disease” as monstrous, insane, dangerous and despicable beings. These two approaches were unhealthy and were designed to preserve the superiority of masculine self over the feminine. These tags which were labelled on women came from their existential fear; ‘the castration anxiety’.