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Difference Between Sultana's Dream And The Yellow Wallpaper

Decent Essays

Title: Repression of female identity by the patriarchal system which the oppressed woman, in response, seeks to subvert through acquiring self-expression via her imagination and knowledge. The essay will focus on the effectiveness of such attempts to reclaim identity.
Texts: “Sultana’s Dream” (SD) by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain & “The Yellow Wallpaper” (TYW) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Rational & justification for choosing the texts: Both texts are set in a similar time period from the 1890s to 1900s. Women of that era were generally subjected to restrictive conditions through being stringently controlled by patriarchy, an issue closely tied to my topic. Women in the social context of TYW were confined to the domestic sphere, their individualities …show more content…

The subordinated women in both texts utilise their creativity and insight to construct imaginative reconfigurations of daily normalcy. Sultana envisions the alternate utopian dimension of Ladyland to articulate her desires for female emancipation. Similarly, TYW sees the narrator adopting her wild imagination to actively shape the wallpaper, the object functioning as a site of her self-expression.
Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of The Medusa.” The Portable Cixous, 2010, pp. 27-39
Historically, women have been repressed in written works. Cixous asserts the need for women to write themselves and to interpolate their voices into the medium of text. Only then can the dominating phallocentric discourse be destructed. In both texts, the authors attempt to transcend this universal censorship of female identity by according the protagonists with a voice – a powerful one that actively resists patriarchal control through the creation of an ambitious dream (SD) and an empowering space within the domestic realm (TYW).
Butler, Judith. “Gender Trouble: Feminism and The Subversion of Identity.” Thinking Gender, 1990, pp.

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