Deconstruction of The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Deconstruction of The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Ercüment Yaşar PhD Candidate in English Language and Literature, İstanbul Aydın University Abstract Knowing the limits of human mind is the first and last of all knowledge. Every act of reading is necessarily incomplete because literary criticism is not a science. However, the use of particular critical methods is fundamental to literary criticism because the use of method in the act of reading provides the text with discipline. It removes the problem of absolute subjectivism by limiting the number of readings to relatively permissible extent. Thanks to help of genetic criticism, it is known that Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also known as Charlotte Perkins Stetson by her first married name, buried her ideology and political tendencies within the text. When the text is scrutinized in light of the author’s life, her references to the discussions in the 19th century psychology and politics become more meaningful for the reader. However, the focus of this paper is not the analysis of this famous short story in light of the feminist literary theory. In fact, it is one of the most preferred ways but this paper targets to bring a new perspective, a less travelled road, in analysis of this significant literary work. The central aim of this paper is to deconstruct The Yellow Wall Paper through the reversal of the binaries by following deconstruction as a literary criticism method while making explicit references to the short story and giving concrete examples in order to make the reader aware of the binary oppositions constructing the text on the structural level.