Project Director

Shaheen, Aaron

Department Examiner

Hampton, Bryan

Department

Dept. of English

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Sickness and Contamination in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” looks at feminism through the lens of nineteenth-century medical practices and how both Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stephen Crane used them to argue against social standards for women. Most women during this time were seen as mentally ill or sick because they were in fact women. However, sexually active women were seen as even more sickly. Gilman in particular exposes sexism within the medical practice, and Crane builds on that by exposing sexism towards sexually active women through the idea of contamination. This paper refers to research concerning both Gilman and Crane, but also to common nineteenth-century medical treatment and diagnosis to demonstrate its argument.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my family, Dr. Shaheen, and Dr. Hampton for their support and help through the journey. I could not have done it without you all. Thank you!

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Date

12-2018

Name

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, -- 1860-1935 -- Criticism and interpretation; Crane, Stephen, -- 1871-1900 -- Criticism and interpretation.

Keyword

Sickness; Feminism; Contamination; Spreading; Containment; Contagion

Discipline

English Language and Literature

Document Type

Theses

Extent

45 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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