Entrapment between the walls: The Psychological Effects of Human Behavior and Mental Instability in The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea

Shreya Gupta; Mukuta Borah

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.55790

Entrapment between the walls: The Psychological Effects of Human Behavior and Mental Instability in The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea

Author(s)	Ms. Shreya Gupta, Dr. Mukuta Borah
Country	India
Abstract	This study undertakes a multidisciplinary literary analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), two texts in which female protagonists are literally and metaphorically trapped by confining structures. In both works, the heroines are confined by patriarchal and colonial systems through the domestic “room” or estate and through oppressive marriage and social roles leading to profound mental breakdown. Drawing on feminist, psychoanalytic, trauma, and ecofeminist theories, the paper shows how geographical isolation, rigid gender roles, and cultural alienation interact to exacerbate the characters’ psychological deterioration. This framework allows us to see imprisonment not only as a physical condition but as an ecological and social phenomenon: the texts depict nature and space as extensions of the mind. For example, in The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator’s barred window and forbidden garden become symbols of thwarted freedom and a “rest cure” regime that literally drives her mad. Likewise, in Wide Sargasso Sea Antoinette Cosway’s lush Caribbean surroundings the garden, water, and the very Sargasso Sea evoked in the title simultaneously mirror her fleeting solace and her mounting alienation. These natural settings serve as double-edged metaphors: they are at once repressive spaces (patriarchally medicalized rooms, colonial estates) and fragile sanctuaries of psychological release. The analysis details how entrapment precipitate’s identity fragmentation and trauma. Gilman’s heroine gradually projects her repressed self onto the wallpaper, blurring reality and hallucination, underscoring how enforced seclusion internalizes societal repression. Antoinette’s sense of self is fractured by racial and cultural dislocation she is neither wholly Caribbean nor English a split reflected in the chaotic landscape around her. The paper also emphasizes the intersectional power structures at work: Yellow Wallpaper critiques the medicalization of women’s bodies as patriarchal control, and Wide Sargasso Sea exposes how colonial patriarchy (through Rochester’s distrust and domination) subdues the “exotic” other. In both cases, the protagonists’ mental collapse is depicted as a direct result of these oppressive relations. By uniting these texts under a spatial ecological lens, the study makes a novel contribution to literary discourse. It demonstrates that patriarchal and colonial forces confine not only physical bodies but also minds, so that psychological trauma becomes a socially and spatially produced phenomenon. Nature itself is shown to be a gendered, colonized domain, illuminating the intricate interplay of environment, identity, and mental health. The paper thus highlights a notable gap in current criticism: discussions of confinement in these works often overlook how space and ecology function as metaphors for entrapment. By foregrounding spatial and ecological imagery of imprisonment, this research calls for more ecocritical and trauma-informed approaches to understand women’s mental confinement. In sum, The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea are shown to exemplify the destructive effects of cultural and environmental entrapment on female psyche, underscoring both the stakes of spatial oppression and the resilience of the human spirit under tyranny.
Keywords	Entrapment, Psychological trauma, Mental instability, Human behavior, Confinement, Patriarchal oppression, Colonialism, Feminist theory, Psychoanalysis, Trauma theory, Ecofeminism, Nature symbolism, Mental deterioration, psychological fragmentation.
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 5, September-October 2025
Published On	2025-09-13
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.55790

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Entrapment between the walls: The Psychological Effects of Human Behavior and Mental Instability in The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea

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