Critical Approaches to "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I chose to research "The Yellow Wallpaper", a text that focuses on the descent into delirium by a woman who's suffering from post-partum depression. Her husband is a physician and recommends that she refrain from any sort of intellectual exhaustion, and moves them together to a new house for three weeks to help her recover. Here, while not being able to do anything besides sit in a bedroom all day and sleep, the main character is driven crazy--- supposedly by the ugly yellow wallpaper. I chose to research this text because although it was originally written for mental illness awareness, it has been reduced to merely feminist themes and ideas. I feel like the text has meaning that goes beyond those ideas, and I want to explore it through this assignment.

[Disability Studies]
I thought I could focus on ableism in the text, where instead of focusing on her mental fatigue, focusing on her desire to write. How of all the activities she needs to refrain from, it appears that writing is one she is most worried of being caught doing. To her, intellectual rest is not what she needs, but instead writing makes her feel better. All the while, her husband and sister-in-law see it as what drove her to madness. Writing seems to be the cause of prejudice from her family.

[New Historicism]
I want to look into the diagnosis of women with illnesses at the time, as well as mental illness. Charlotte Gilman was diagnosed with mental illness and that was her stated reason for writing the text, however I would like to look more into the cultural stigma of the diagnosis, and how the patients were treated. I think in understanding the stigma behind these illnesses, as well as the way they were understood then, would help me to then analyze how it influenced the way Gilman presented the text, or the way others then would interpret the text-- especially in regards to her illness being a state of mind and something to think away, or more of a physical illness. This would go back to exploring the original purpose of the text stated by Gilman.

[Archetypal Criticism]
I would like to look into the different character archetypes embedded within the text, and how they begin to stray from the archetype and morph into new ones. The main character, who remains unnamed, starts out as the hero and protagonist, however slowly becomes what seems like an antagonist throughout the text. The wallpaper itself, as well as the journal she's writing in, also morph into crucial characters within the text. I want to look into the shadow character archetypes to see what meaning can be pulled from both the main character, the wallpaper, and the journal, all existing as the shadow character at some point in the text.

[Psychoanalytical Criticism]
This theory is wildly overused on this text, however I want to take what is hopefully a new approach. I want to focus on the aspect of "collective unconscious" for this piece. The main character seems to have an innate desire and need to write, which I feel like is connected to an ancestral memory of recording history. I want to connect it to evidences of cave art, and our earliest known hero epics, and how the writings in the journal resemble those themes of recorded stories, but also of a hero's journey, or a hero's downfall that could be compared to the character development of our main character.