Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Bachelor of Arts in English Literary Studies

Advisor

Laura D'Amore, Ph.D.

Abstract

This thesis project analyzes Sylvia Plath’s poetry collection Ariel and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper to show how authors who are women often transform their own trauma into acts of reclamation and feminist resistance through written depictions of their experiences. Using a feminist literary framework, the analysis explores how both authors reclaim the female body in literature, transforming it from a site of passiveness or victimization into a site of defiance and agency. The combination of close reading and attention to both autobiographical and confessional styles of work provides a strong method for the examination of Plath’s poems, such as “Lady Lazarus” and “Medusa,” which discuss topics related to domestic distress, mental illness, and suicide. This approach also highlights Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and its own portrayal of oppressive domestic structures, referencing the “rest cure,” alongside forced confinement. The pairing reveals how both authors convert their vast internal suffering into a public critique of oppressive power structures, which is evidenced in the existing biographical sources about them. When examined simultaneously, the works reveal how Plath and Gilman used their life stories to expose the distortion and silencing of women’s suffering by transforming their pain into truthful writing to reclaim power. Ultimately, this project demonstrates the wounded and traumatized female body’s potential to serve as a site of resistance in literature by examining how women’s depictions of trauma challenge patriarchal authority, assert agency, and redefine their experiences.

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