female body -- the sum of its parts? In short story, novel, and poetic depictions of Gillman, Brooks, and Piercy despised flower, called a yellow weed by most observers. A trapped and voiceless bodily entity, like a ghost, perhaps behind a surface of peeling yellow wallpaper. A plastic doll with yellow hair with pneumatic dimensions and candied cherry lips. These three contrasting images all have been used to characterize the female body throughout popular media discourse. All of these fetish-like depictions have also been used as well to characterize the female body throughout literary history, from the 19th century to the present. Yet when these images are used and selectively deployed by women, in the prose of the female authors Gwendolyn Brooks, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Marge Piercy respectively, they have taken on additional ironic resonance and power, saying more about how culture has limited female social and psychological development,...
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