Author(s): Dionah Mae B. Comillas

Abstract: This qualitative study examines Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper through feminist criticism to explain how the text depicts female confinement and resistance under patriarchal systems. Using close textual analysis, the study focuses on three narrative elements: characters, setting, and symbolism. Findings reveal that confinement is enforced through John’s dual authority as husband and physician, which restricts the narrator’s mobility, voice, and writing, producing physical and psychological captivity. The nursery environment further materializes control through its isolating and infantilizing features, while the wallpaper functions as a central symbol of oppressive domestic ideology. At the same time, the narrator’s secret journal, her identification with the trapped woman in the wallpaper, and her final tearing of the pattern demonstrate resistance as a gradual but disruptive assertion of agency. Overall, the study concludes that the narrator’s breakdown emerges from denied autonomy, yet her acts of defiance expose the persistence of female resistance within restrictive social structures. This study recommends exploring gender with class and mental health discourse, comparing historical confinement with modern gendered controls, and examining domestic space as discipline.

Keywords: Female Confinement, Resistance, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Qualitative Study, Feminist

Article Info: Received: 07 Feb 2026; Received in revised form: 05 Mar 2026; Accepted: 10 Mar 2026; Available online: 15 Mar 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.112.21