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"The Yellow Wallpaper", A Descent Into Madness In the nineteenth century, women in literature were often portrayed as submissive to men. Literature of the period often characterized women as oppressed by society, as well as by the male influences in their lives. ....

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.... clearest alteration of previous understandings of gender: its refiguration of domestic spaces, and hence, domestic identity according to the narrative of repetitive work and compulsion that had once served to distinguish public life from a sentimentary understood home" [Fleissner 59]. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a fictionalized account of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own postpartum depression. Gilman was a social critic and feminist who wrote prolifically about the necessity of social and sexual equality, particularly about women’s need for economic independence. According to critic Valarie Gill, "Gilman attached the nineteenth century&# ....