Make Room for the New Woman : The Extinction of the Earth-bound Angel in Three Short Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin

Abstract: This essay explores the feminist message in Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “An Extinct Angel” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The relationship between space and gender will be examined in connection with theoretical conceptions of female consciousness. The study makes use of feminist theory and is particularly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s conception of the gender-space relationship, along with later feminist critics’ works on gender consciousness. It is argued that the authors, through these short stories, describe the contemporary female experience and propose the claiming of space as the solution to end female repression. The study ultimately shows that these stories convey the authors’ appeal for the awakening of the feminist consciousness - an appeal to kill ‘the angel in the house’.