De waarheid achter het patroon : ziek vrouw-zijn als stimulans om rekenschap te geven van een onkenbaar Zelf in Charlotte P. Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper

Like the author, the main character of The Yellow Wallpaper (1890) suffers from mental illness and – even more so – from the treatment thereof. Both Charlotte Gilman and her heroine react against their unfair treatments by telling their own story. This article elucidates the truth those illness narratives contain. I approach the short story, its narrator and its author from a gender-deconstructionist angle, focussing on the concept of performativity as theorized in Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter (1993) and Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). In that context, performances of identity, like storytelling, are coded by an enabling matrix. Matching up these insights against theories of Elaine Showalter, sociologist Arthur Frank and queer theorist Judith Halberstam, I establish a link between performance, storytelling and gender. The analysis shows that illness narratives are potentially, yet not necessarily subversive. Indeed, while Gilman offers an alternative for suppressive Victorian discourse, her narrator fails to disjoint the system that terms her ‘ill’.Like the author, the main character of The Yellow Wallpaper (1890) suffers from mental illness and – even more so – from the treatment thereof. Both Charlotte Gilman and her heroine react against their unfair treatments by telling their own story. This article elucidates the truth those illness narratives contain. I approach the short story, its narrator and its author from a gender-deconstructionist angle, focussing on the concept of performativity as theorized in Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter (1993) and Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). In that context, performances of identity, like storytelling, are coded by an enabling matrix. Matching up these insights against theories of Elaine Showalter, sociologist Arthur Frank and queer theorist Judith Halberstam, I establish a link between performance, storytelling and gender. The analysis shows that illness narratives are potentially, yet not necessarily subversive. Indeed, while Gilman offers an alternative for suppressive Victorian discourse, her narrator fails to disjoint the system that terms her ‘ill’.A