Beyond The Walls: Female Agency And Madness In The Bell Jar, The Yellow Wallpaper, And Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

This paper critically explores the intersection of gender, mental health, and patriarchal oppression as represented in literature and medical discourse. Through a close analysis of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963), Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the study investigates how these texts portray the confinement of women labelled as "mad" and their responses to such diagnoses. The analysis foregrounds the role of patriarchal medicine in pathologizing women’s mental health by associating it with their physical bodies, particularly the uterus, thus justifying their exclusion from public and intellectual life through isolation and restrictive treatments like enforced bed rest. These literary works challenge patriarchal medical narratives by subverting representations of women as irrational or weak, instead presenting female protagonists who resist these oppressive structures through imaginative and psychological rebellion. The paper traces the historical roots of the medicalization of female madness, from ancient Greek conceptions of hysteria to its institutionalization in the 19th and 20th centuries, while engaging with feminist critiques that reveal how such medical practices functioned as mechanisms of control. This study highlights how these texts enact a feminist revision of dominant narratives by reclaiming female agency and critiquing the patriarchal underpinnings of mental health treatment.