CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE “The Yellow Wallpaper” was originally seen by some readers as a ghost story and was anthologized as such. More recently, critics have tended to interpret the story from a feminist perspective, focusing on the way in which the nameless narrator is victimized by the men around her and by the values of the Victorian society they uphold. In the essay “An Unnecessary Maze of Sign-Reading,” Mary Jacobus concludes that the overwhelmingly feminist perspective of recent criticism, though certainly valuable and enlightening, has overlooked other promising critical possibilities for example, “the Gothic and uncanny elements present in the text.
” If you were teaching “The Yellow Wallpaper,” would you present it as a feminist story or as a chilling gothic ghost story? Do you think interpreting the story as a gothic horror tale precludes a feminist reading, or do you see the two interpretations as compatible?
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