Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This article consists of a cultural analysis of the nineteenth-century influence that forced female patients diagnosed with neurasthenia to rest from intellectual and domestic activity. The history of Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure”, which was designed for women suffering from nerves, is the context for an interpretation of C. P. Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The theory of illness proposed by the famous medical doctor was evidently correlated with gender. Although the description of the therapy (rest, diet, massages) sounds trivial, Mitchell became the evil character of the American writer’s tale. The story shows how a strict “boredom therapy” drives the narrator to madness. The rest cure reveals the repressive side of medicine, and the resultant boredom – a pivotal point of the treatment – is a boredom that kills. There is no room here for rest in the positive sense; there is only boredom, which in this case, has exclusively negative connotations.

Artykuł zawiera kulturową analizę wpływu przymusowego odpoczynku od aktywności intelektualnej i domowej nałożonego na XIX-wieczne pacjentki diagnozowane jako cierpiące na neurastenię. Historia terapii Weira Mitchella Rest Cure, stworzona dla kobiet cierpiących z powodu nerwów, stanowi kontekst dla interpretacji  ztandarowego opowiadania C.P. Gilman Żółta tapeta. Teoria choroby zaproponowana przez słynnego lekarza była wyraźnie skorelowana z płcią. Mimo że sam opis terapii (odpoczynek, dieta, masaże) brzmi trywialnie, to Mitchell stał się czarnym charakterem w  owiadaniu amerykańskiej prozaiczki. Tekst Gilman w metaforyczny sposób pokazuje, jak rygorystycznie zastosowana terapia nudą doprowadza narratorkę do szaleństwa. Terapia spoczynkowa pokazuje represyjne oblicze medycyny, tym  samym nuda, stanowiąca główne założenie leczenia, jest nudą wręcz zabójczą. Nie ma tu miejsca na odpoczynek, postrzegany pozytywnie, pozostaje nuda, która w tym przypadku ma znaczenie wyłącznie pejoratywne.

Women have been deemed mad for centuries. Such a diagnosis leads them to two paths: they either die within themselves, or, more advantageously, they ascend to a different level of freedom. In this paper, focusing on two texts produced in the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892) and Kate Chopin’s The awakening (1899), we argue that, with a Gothic-like morbidity, their self-destructive protagonists, when facing restricting and limited lives, are aroused by a death instinct more satisfying than the unbearable reality they live in. Thus, it is through the annihilation of life, either via madness or death, that they reach liberation.

The novel Herland written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, known as "A Lost Feminist Utopian Novel", is is published in 1915, at the time when women did not have the same rights as men. In early life of the author, she had a difficult childhood affected by the fact that her father left the family to her mother to raise the children on her own. She lived in poverty and she had to move around a lot which results in the limited education. When she grew up, she suffered from depression and separated from her husband, which is quite a rare case in the time, and became "active in social reform movements and was an advocate of the Nationalist movement, which began with the publication of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), a novel depicting a Socialist, Utopian future." (Gagnon) This utopian novel of Bellamy might be one of the inspiration for Herland, the feminist utopia. However, one of her most famous work is not a fiction, but a non-fiction called Women and Economics, which is a work suggesting for economic independence of women. Many of her other works had influenced greatly on the construction of Utopia in Herland. For example, "Her notions of redefining domestic and childcare chores as social responsibilities to be centralized in the hands of those particularly suited and trained for them reflected her earlier interest in the Nationalist clubs advocated by Edward Bellamy" and "The Man-Made World (1911), in which she distinguished the characteristic virtues and vices of men and women and attributed the ills of the world to the dominance of men." (Encyclopedia Britannica) She believed that both domestic environment and men oppress women. (Gagnon) In general, she dedicated herself to the idea of feminism and women's rights activism.

The essay analyses the politicisation of the concept of women through the re-signification of domestic space. The text analyses in particular the thought of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, examining especially Women and Economics (1898) and The Home: its Work and Influence (1903). In the first part, the American context and some of the earlier reflections on the home are reconstructed. Then it is noted how Gilman links the oppression of women to the restraint on the evolution of society. Finally, it is highlighted how the politicisation of the house goes hand in hand with its exposure to experts and efficiency criteria, in order to show how Gilman’s proposal contains both potentials and risks.

In addressing an audience such as this, I am very conscious of the diversity here in the room today. I know there are women here from the various religious traditions represented in the North of Ireland. For some women this meeting will be their first on the topic of women and religion; there are some who maintain very close personal links with the Christian churches, and I know that there are others whose life-history and experience have taken them in very different directions. Some would describe themselves as "post-Christian." Others might be searching for new ways of reclaiming an ancient religious heritage where women and female symbolism were valued and revered. Their journey might have taken them beyond the Christian churches, and indeed the Christian story itself. Addressing an audience such as this is a very daunting task because we have come with very different expectations. The question that has been foremost for me as I prepared to come here was this: What is it that unites us? What is it that divides us? How can I speak a word that might make sense, and that might offer us a way of understanding our experience in relation to the religious traditions represented here? How can I speak a word that might make sense to us in the context of a province whose political and religious agony has been splashed across the world for the past twenty years? Does the question of the relationship of women to religion have any bearing on what has happened, or is it simply a peripheral issue of very restricted interest? I would like to begin by telling you a little bit about my own personal journey, and then come back to the question again. What is it that unites us; what is it that divides us? I was born in Dublin, and brought up by very pious parents in the Roman Catholic tradition. My father's greatest ambition for me was to see me becoming a contemplative nun. I was called, as I was frequently reminded, after the "Little Flower," St. Therese of Liseaux. Her picture hung over my bed all through my childhood. At the age of twenty I did indeed enter an enclosed Carmelite convent in England, not to fulfil my father's ambitions, but in response to my own religious journeying and questing that throughout all my adolescence had been extremely painful and intense. But my journey did not end there, and within several years I found myself at the University of Hull, in 1970, studying theology, sociology, and social anthropology. There I became involved with the movement for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. During this time I wrote many articles, gave many lectures, and interviews on television and radio, on the question of women and the church.

While the gothic has been the subject of many books and articles, few studies have been dedicated to what is called « The Female Gothic », the term that has been used to describe the peculiar use which female writers have made of the genre. The female gothic literature is profoundly attached to the authors’ social and psychological status in a patriarchal society, and serves as a very accurate portrait of the female experience. In this study, the ghost stories of two female gothic authors of the 19th century will be analyzed. The first one, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was a declared feminist, who wrote her ghost stories after having suffered from post-partum depression, and having her treatment supervised by her own husband and a male doctor, who believed that her problem came from the fact that her mind was too active, and that forbidding all sorts of creative activity would be a remedy. The second author, Edith Wharton, gives us an insider’s view of the American High Society, drawing a realistic portrayal of what went on behind the curtains in the lives of American families, using ghosts and other gothic elements as ways of reinforcing her point of view.

Story of the girlhood and young life, semi-autobiographical, of a precocious girl who decides to be a "good villain," since the villains are the ones who actually motivate action. In case after case, she contrives to bring about a change almost without notice. First publication in book form.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's semi-autobiographical short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” embodies the idea that Victorian women were oppressed both by the institution of marriage and the male-dominated medical profession, as seen in the narrator’s disempowerment, infantilization, and, ultimately, true madness caused by the resting cure.

No es frecuente que gente común como John y yo pueda alquilar por el verano una casa solariega. Una mansión colonial, un solar hereditario, diría una casa con fantasmas, alcanzando el clímax de la felicidad romántica-¡pero eso sería pedirle demasiado al destino! Sin embargo, declararé orgullosamente que algo tiene de raro. Si no, ¿Por qué la arrendarían tan barato? ¿Y por qué quedó tanto tiempo sin inquilinos? John se ríe de mí, por supuesto, pero una espera eso. John es extremadamente práctico. Se impacienta con la fe, le horroriza intensamente la superstición, y se burla abiertamente de todo comentario sobre cosas que no se pueden palpar y ver y enumerar. John es médico y tal vez (no se lo diría a nadie, por supuesto, pero esta hoja es papel muerto y por eso me alivia enormemente), tal vez ésa sea una de las razones por la que no mejoro más rápidamente. Ves, ¡él no cree que estoy enferma! ¿Y una, qué puede hacer? Si un médico de gran categoría, y marido de una, les asegura a los amigos y parientes que en realidad una no tiene nada sino una depresión nerviosa temporal -una ligera tendencia histérica-, ¿qué puede hacer una? Mi hermano también es médico, también de gran categoría, y dice lo mismo. Así, tomo fosfatos o fosfitos -lo que sea-y tónicos, y aire y ejercicio, y viajes, y me han prohibido terminantemente "trabajar" hasta que mejore. Personalmente, no estoy de acuerdo con sus ideas. Personalmente, pienso que un trabajo agradable, emocionante y lleno de cambios, me haría bien. ¿Pero, qué puede hacer una? Escribí durante un tiempo y a pesar de ellos, pero la verdad es que me cansa mucho tener que ser tan furtiva, o si no enfrentarme con tanta oposición. A veces me parece que, dada mi condición, debería encontrar menos oposición y más compañía y estímulo -pero John dice que lo peor, lo peor que puedo hacer es pensar en mi condición, y confieso que siempre me hace sentir mal hacerlo. Por eso no lo voy hacer y voy a hablar de la casa. ¡Un lugar hermosísimo! Está bien aislada, bien apartada de la carretera, a unas tres millas del pueblo. Me hace pensar en esos lugares ingleses sobre los que uno lee, pues hay setos vivos y muros y portones con candado, y muchas casitas separadas para los jardineros y la gente. ¡Hay un jardín precioso! Nunca vi semejante jardín -grande y sombreado, lleno de senderos con canteros a los bordes y cruzado por pérgolas revestidas de largos sarmientos con asientos debajo de ellas. Había invernaderos pero ahora todos están con los vidrios rotos. Hubo algún problema legal, creo, algo relacionado con los herederos y coherederos; de todos modos, hace años que el lugar está deshabitado. Temo que eso arruina mi tema de los fantasmas, pero no me importa -esta casa tiene algo raro -lo puedo sentir. Hasta se lo dije a John una noche de Luna, pero él me dijo que lo que sentía era una ráfaga de viento y cerró la ventana. A veces me enojo con John sin razón. Estoy segura de que nunca antes fui tan sensible como ahora. Pienso que tiene qué ver con este estado nervioso. Pero John dice que si me siento así perderé el debido control personal; por eso me esfuerzo para controlarmedelante de él, por lo menos, y eso me hace sentir muy cansada. No me gusta nada nuestra habitación. Quería una en la planta baja que da al patio, una que tenía las ventanas cubiertas de rosas y ¡con lindas cortinas de zaraza a la antigua usanza! Pero John no quiso saber nada. ÉI dijo que había sólo una ventana, sin lugar para dos camas, y sin ninguna otra habitación cerca por si acaso se decidiera a ocupar otra. ÉI es muy atento y cariñoso, y apenas deja que me mueva sin decirme quehacer. Tengo un horario organizado para cada hora del día; él me cuida totalmente, y por eso me siento terriblemente desagradecida por no apreciarlo más. ÉI dijo que vino hasta aquí sólo por mí, que yo debería tener un descanso perfecto y todo el aire que pudiera respirar. "Tu ejercicio depende de tu fuerza, mi amor", me dijo, "y tu comida un poco de tu apetito; pero puedes absorber el aire todo el tiempo". Así que ocupamos el cuarto de los niños en la planta alta de la casa. Es una habitación grande, espaciosa, que ocupa casi toda la planta, con ventanas que dan a todas partes, y aire y sol a montones. Fue primero un cuarto de niños, y luego un cuarto de recreo y un gimnasio, por lo menos así me parece, porque las ventanas tienen barrotes a causa de los niños, y hay argollas y cosas en las paredes. La pintura y el papel se parecen a los de un colegio de muchachos. Se ha desprendido a tiras -el papel-dejando grandes huecos a la altura de mi cabeza, hasta donde yo puedo alcanzar, y en una gran área, abajo, al otro lado de la habitación. Nunca vi papel tan feo en mi vida. Es uno de esos vastos diseños extravagantes que cometen todos los pecados artísticos. Es tan aburrido que confunde al ojo al querer seguirlo; lo bastante llamativo que irrita y provoca constantemente su observación, y al seguir las torpes curvas inciertas-por un trecho éstas se suicidan -precipitándose en absurdos ángulos, destruyéndose en inauditas contradicciones. El color es repelente, casi repugnante: un humeante amarillo sucio, extrañamente desteñido por el lento girar de la luz del Sol. En algunos lugares es un naranja apagado pero chillón; tiene un pegajoso tinte sulfúrico en otros. ¡No es sorprendente que los niños lo odiasen! Yo misma le odiaría también si tuviera que vivir mucho tiempo en esta habitación. Ahí viene John, y tengo que guardar esto -le molesta que yo escriba, no importa cuánto.

Trauma is defined as a type of psychic damage which occurs as a result of a traumatic event or process which wrecks psychic mechanisms, disrupting the perception, understanding, and feelings of the traumatized victim. This traumatic event is forced from memory but it repeats itself in the form of some symptoms such as psychic numbing, flashbacks, hallucinations, and nightmares — which are symbolic repetitions of the event, and the victim reexperiences it again and again. To heal from the trauma, one should create a symbolic form —mostly narrative— to be able to work through it and narrate his/her experiences and reexperiences. The aim of this paper is to comment on one of these trauma narratives, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” which is a multilayered story that narrates a traumatized middle-class woman’s acting out the symptoms of trauma caused by the social imposition of reductive models of femininity on her.

The 1910s were a period of tremendous visibility of eugenic ideas throughout the United States, in large part because of Progressive Era enthusiasm for scientific solutions to social problems. Americans were concerned with how to improve the hereditary quality of the human race and eugenics was the science dedicated to pursuing that goal.

Resumen Toda sociedad desarrolla una serie de paradigmas en las conductas hu-manas para así lograr ejercer control sobre sus individuos y mantener el statu quo. Estos paradigmas son un abuso contra el colectivo femenino mediante diferentes medidas como lo es el encierro y aislamiento del sujeto utilizando la locura femenina como justificación. En " The Yellow Wallpaper " [El papel de pared amarillo] de Charlotte Perkins Gilman, la protagonista se ve envuelta en una lucha interna y externa para lograr reclamar su autoría y así lograr reafirmarse ante la ideología patriarcal que intenta encerrarla y clasificarla como loca. Abstract Every society develops a series of paradigms to establish human behaviors as a way to exercise control over its individuals and maintain the status quo. These paradigms are an abuse against the female collective through means of different measures such as the imprisonment and isolation of a subject by using female madness as an excuse. In " The Yellow Wallpaper " by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is in an internal and external struggle in order to reclaim her female authorship and thus reaffirm herself against the patriarcal ideology that tries to imprison and classify her as crazy.

The Yellow Wallpaper uses vivid psychological and psychoanalytical imagery and a powerful feminist message to present a theme of women’s need to escape from imprisonment by their patriarchal society. The narrator’s identification with the woman in the wallpaper is also symbolic of her identification with women of her class in the greater society beyond the confines of the country mansion. She experiences the scrutiny of society through the perceived scrutiny of eyes in the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Her isolation from social contact and the forced cessation of her writing add layers of repression to her life, forcing her to find escape in madness when she is unable to find physical escape from the nursery of the country mansion or social escape from male domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is a cautionary tale against the subjugation of women by men, against the repression of women’s creative expressions, and against the dangers inherent in the social isolation associated with the 19th century rest cure.

This article puts forward a queer interpretation of PBS’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1989), adapted from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s canonical story. It is structured in three parts: an approach to the term queer, a reading of the queerness (and feminism) of Gilman’s text and an analysis of the queer (and feminist) aspects of the film. The third part also responds to the only academic essay about PBS’s production, by Janet Beer, which ignores the movie’s queer character. This section discusses the queer treatment of topics—the instability of identity, autoeroticism, lesbian tendencies, mental illness, women’s solidarity, and gender and class inequalities—while dialoguing with film critics such as Linda Hutcheon and Laura Mulvey. The queer use of formal resources—light, shots, sound, music, symbolism and scene-motifs—is also highlighted. My ultimate aim is to demonstrate that The Yellow Wallpaper is an innovative queer adaptation of Gilman’s piece for a modern audience.

Envisaging a revolutionary world, an exact opposite of the patriarchal order, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland aka “A Lost Feminist Utopian Novel” is written at the turn of the twentieth century when women could not vote, divorce and work after marriage. Within her novel, she imagines the world in which we see women’s full participation in society as intelligent, resourceful and brave individuals; where women are free to live up to their potential as intellectuals and as people; and she designs an ideal, ever improving social order that is free of war, conflict, and domination. But when we take a closer look at how the novel accomplishes and, in a way, offers the ideal, progressive alternative to the unequal conditions of women in reality, we see an elephant in the room full of glasses: the practices of Eugenics which have a very crucial role in giving a flawless shape to Herland. As Asha Nadkarni says, Gilman utilizes a “eugenic mechanism” for the sake of creating a perfect society. In this context, I argue that representation of Eugenics as a recipe for a perfect society in the novel raises, in many ways, both ethical and formal issues, though. How ethical is to eliminate a member that is not the fittest (namely the disabled and weak) from the society? Is it a moral act to establish a nation with one, single, pure race? What is the morality behind the fact that only a few number of eligible women are allowed to be a mother? Also, nature versus nurture comes to the fore as another problematic issue within a moral context of the novel. To offer a better understanding of these ethical questions about the era my thesis paper will also focus on how the social and historical atmosphere at the turn of the twentieth century was. Finally, it will discuss the genre matter: Can Herland be regarded as a “feminist eu/utopia” despite the practices of Eugenics? Are these supposedly what feminists have dreamed of and /or feared for?

Ütopya, kelime anlamı ile "gerçekleştirilmesi imkânsız tasarı veya düşünce"dir. (Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, 2019) Etimolojik olarak incelendiğinde ise Yunanca 'da "topos" yer anlamına gelmekte ve "eu" takısı ile kullanıldığında "iyi yer", "ou" takısı ile kullanıldığında ise "olmayan yer" anlamını taşımaktadır. Bu anlamda ütopya kavramının "olmayan iyi yer" olarak tanımlanabileceği söylenmektedir (Akkoyunlu Ertan, 2003). Ütopya, düşünürün hayalinde kurguladığı en iyi yer anlamında düşünüldüğünde, eserin yazıldığı döneme yönelik eleştirilerin rahatlıkla bulunabileceği söylenebilmektedir. Nitekim ütopya kurguları toplum yansımalarının eleştirel bir gözüdür. Fakat bu eleştiriler "olması arzulanan" olarak karşımıza çıkmakta ve çok daha olumlu izler barındırmaktadır. Bu çalışmada ütopya geleneği ile ilgili birtakım bilgiler verilecek, ardından Charlotte Perkins Gilman'ın kaleme aldığı "Kadınlar Ülkesi" kitabının içerdiği imgeler incelemeye tabi tutulacaktır ve sonuç kısmında kitap, feminist ütopyacılık bağlamında değerlendirilecektir.

A partir de uma observação dos tempos góticos em que vivemos atualmente, esta comunicação tem como objetivo analisar os danos psíquicos que a pandemia de Covid-19 lega aos indivíduos, bem como traçar, em paralelo, uma relação com os contos “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892), de Charlotte Perkins Gilman, e “On a Cold Day” (1999), de Himani Bannerji, em seu modo de encontrar sobrevida frente às adversidades que encontram. Desde a declaração da Organização Mundial da Saúde do status do novo coronavírus como pandêmico, em 11 de março de 2020, além de mais de meio milhão de vidas brasileiras perdidas, há um prejuízo irreparável que ficará conosco: o medo, a ansiedade e o nervosismo são efeitos de um enclausuramento forçado, das mudanças repentinas e de uma insegurança geral, sentidos por 40% dos participantes de uma pesquisa realizada pela Fiocruz de Brasília e da Bahia (2021). Ademais, aquilo que se entendia como real e virtual, em regime de home office, se mistura às horas incontáveis em frente à tela de computadores e de celulares, seja por tarefas profissionais ou por simples lazer. Desse modo, a loucura que Showalter (1985) chama de female malady dos anos oitocentos no século XXI pandêmico se tornou flagelo humano, comum àqueles que temem pela fragilidade de suas vidas. Tendo em vista esse cenário gótico, o que fazer então quando o nosso papel de parede amarelo parece ter se tornando os milhares de pixels que compõem a tela de um aparelho eletrônico? O caminho parece ser delineado pelas personagens dos contos, pois é em abjetando (KRISTEVA, 1982) a si mesmas que elas, enfim, encontram liberdade, formam a sua identidade e ganham sobrevida; seja fazendo-se louca ou aniquilando a sua própria história no corpo de outra. A reflexão que nos resta, então, é saber: que parte de nós teremos que matar quando tudo isso acabar?

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Louise Nevelson’s work is today all too often treated as marginal and idiosyncratic. Yet her art remains vital to the broader study of American modernism, for it targeted the modernist myth of autonomy at multiple levels. Adopting strategies from gothic literature, Nevelson exposed what modernism had repressed: the fear that its claims for autonomy are critically unstable. In the dark space of her home, she confronted modernist art with this gothic fear, revealing how the specter of domesticity haunts its theory and practice.

Language is a vehicle of conveying thoughts, not an enclosed entity. It does not only reflect the user's ideology, but also affects one's perspective of the world and his position in it. Conservatives claim that literary language-as a manifestation of stylistic linguistics-transcends culture; while others counter that it is subversive by nature. Genealogy emerges to reveal the importance of literature for understanding dominant and often violent power/knowledge relations within a given society. Gender has been one of the genealogical powers dealt with in relation to language, for language had been thought of as a phallocentric phenomenon which is to be constructed according to the user's gender role. This research paper sheds light on the genealogy of feminist linguistics in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" through tracing the power game of language in relation to gender roles.

Gothic horror arrived in America in the latter half of the eighteenth century as one of many imports – literary and cultural – from England during this period of intense transatlantic circulation. As an experimental and often transgressive genre, the Gothic novel found a congenial home in the fiercely independent new nation. By the 1790s the American Gothic was well on its way to establishing a set of themes and concerns that would become uniquely its own. These included the frontier and its native inhabitants, Puritanism and its tendency towards religious excess and the individual in relation to the larger body politic. Aesthetically the Gothic novel embraced several different modes; of these, horror was the most significant and the most deeply rooted in American rhetorical and literary traditions. Present already in the uniquely American form of writing known as the captivity narrative, horror writing emerged in full force in the late eighteenth century as a modern reaction-formation to shifts in the political and religious landscape. As historian Karen Halttunen (2000) has shown, modern American horror was born at the moment when religious narratives had lost their purchase on explaining crime and, especially, murder. While Protestant religious narratives about evil had regarded it as a natural and inevitable fact of fallen existence on earth, the new, secular paradigms of the Romantic movement and the Enlightenment could only consider violent crimes as mysterious aberrations. The result of this epistemological gap was a fascination with the details of bodily mutilation and the life history of killers that has persisted until today. The moment of horror's arrival in the fledgling United States also corresponded with a time of intense social transition as the new nation struggled to define itself and decide upon the precise character of its political institutions. For example, there was the public debate about federalism against republicanism, with its choice between centralised authority as opposed to greater states' rights. The country had committed itself to a democratic government, but many practical and philosophical questions about what this meant and how to implement it remained. Novelists took up the challenge of thinking through some of the dilemmas raised by the curious phenomenon of a disparate set of colonies banding together to cast off the trappings of empire and now facing the task of inventing themselves as a coherent political unity. Inherently engaged with questions of ethics and moral judgement, the horror mode lent itself to such experiments in political thought, as did the specific historical circumstances and background of the young republic. These included the popular genre of captivity

The focus of this article will be Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s thoroughly anthologized story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1892). Beyond the patriarchal perception of the narrator as progressively falling into madness, this study aims to prove that, in line with some feminist readings of the story (e.g. Haney-Peritz, 1986), the unnamed female protagonist consciously elaborates a mad language and discourse as part of her strategy to fight patriarchy from within. A careful study of this language will break the reader’s initial illusion that the protagonist is mad and will show how she finally embraces the rational discourse of medicine to perpetrate her revenge.