Gender identity in literature

Frankenstein and "The Yellow Wallpaper," popular stories of the nineteenth
century and included on most college reading lists, have been installed into limited
chnons that take away from the art ofthe literature. Written when strict social guidelines
ddined and separated the gender spheres, these works show the changing attitudes and
resulting social problems for women, between the early nineteenth century
(Fmnkenstein) and the late nineteenth century ("The Yellow Wallpaper").
The Gothic genre claims Frankenstein, and since its revival in the 1970s, "The
Yell ow Wallpaper" has been firmly seated in the academy under feminist criticism. Each
work belongs to both categories, with elements of each attracting more and more readers.
Readers can discover that Mary Shelley creates a tale about the horrors of pregnancy and
motherhood, while Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates stunning Gothic effects in her short
story embraced by feminist criticism.

Intimate spaces play a key role in the development of human identity, constructing identity through an internalized experience of the house itself. Building on Bachelard's theories in The Poetics of Space, I argue that characters in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World gain a new awareness of self after experiencing nature as a substitute for the house. The emergence of a new identity occurs because nature offers protection from the forces that inhibit both D-503 and Keran's individual growth ; it offers the safety of the house that neither character is allowed in a private home : D-503 because of the panoptic space of the One state and Kerans due to the nature of the changing circumstances of the environment and his own biology that force him to accept his role as a "new" human and the jungle as "home".