Women and Self-Violence

Paper Summary:

The paper focuses on the works, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gillman and "Forgiving My Father" by Lucille Clifton, and how both outline the powerlessness of women and demonstrate examples of self-inflicted violence. The paper highlights how in "The Yellow Wallpaper" the woman is not allowed to express her feelings, even in her madness, while in the poem "Forgiving My Father" we witness the transformation of the woman from a completely helpless child to a self-possessed and angry soul.

From the Paper:

"Women, under the auspices of a system of marriage that left this with very little recourse or power to prosper on their own often felt a sense of powerlessness that encompassed their whole mind and often showed in literature written by them. There are many examples of the kind of powerlessness that brought out within them the traits of human nature that beget powerlessness. In the case of women, as with men, violence was often the most common trait and yet, for women the very concept of violence was considered off limits and so the violence frequently became self-inflicted."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Clifton, Lucille "forgiving my father" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St Martin's, 2005, 314.
• Gelfant, Blanche H., and Lawrence Graver, eds. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
• Gillman, Charlotte Perkins "The Yellow Wallpaper" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St Martin's, 2005, 917-925.
• Herndl, Diane Price. Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
• May, Rollo. Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.

More papers on Women and Self-Violence:

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• Term Paper # 101432 : "Women, Domestic Violence and Alcohol Abuse"
• Research Proposal # 67998 : "Domestic Violence "

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