The Importance of a Room of Her Own

The body of this work consists of a close analysis of Gilman s and Chopin s short stories "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Storm," Erdrich s novel Love Medicine and Cisneros s novella The House on Mango Street. The aim of this analysis was to explore the ways these authors used spatial imagery to reflect upon and respond to their heroines internal and external situation. It was shown that women characters develop their personalities in respect to the place they inhabit, and that this development depends on whether they perceive the space they live in as a space of confinement, subject to male authority, or as a space of their own. The comparison of these works, written in the time span of a century, enabled us to suggest that for female authors, no matter whether they write in the 19th or 20th century, having a space of one s own is essential to a healthy development of a woman s identity. It was also argued that despite a series of cultural, social and legal changes that have taken place in the past decades, the dichotomy between domestic space as entrapment and felicitous space is still seen as valid by contemporary women writers; quite contrary to what one would perhaps expect.

Autorentext

Jitka Han lová was born in Prague, Czech Republic. She graduated from Charles University in Prague with a master s degree in American literature. She is interested in minority literatures, women s writing and feminist theory.

Klappentext

The body of this work consists of a close analysis of Gilman s and Chopin s short stories "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Storm," Erdrich s novel Love Medicine and Cisneros s novella The House on Mango Street. The aim of this analysis was to explore the ways these authors used spatial imagery to reflect upon and respond to their heroines internal and external situation. It was shown that women characters develop their personalities in respect to the place they inhabit, and that this development depends on whether they perceive the space they live in as a space of confinement, subject to male authority, or as a space of their own. The comparison of these works, written in the time span of a century, enabled us to suggest that for female authors, no matter whether they write in the 19th or 20th century, having a space of one s own is essential to a healthy development of a woman s identity. It was also argued that despite a series of cultural, social and legal changes that have taken place in the past decades, the dichotomy between domestic space as entrapment and felicitous space is still seen as valid by contemporary women writers; quite contrary to what one would perhaps expect.