A Corpus-Based Study on Language Features and Literary Themes in the Yellow Wall-Paper and Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This study aims to apply corpus-based approach to analyze The Yellow Wall-Paper and Herland written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a women's rights activist in the late nineteenth-century America. Although both works have attracted feminists' attention to the woman question that concerned Gilman, discussion on her language features and their relation to the literary themes of these two works is still in need. In this corpus-based analysis, we argue that the main themes of different literary works can be revealed through linguistic patterns identified by number and gender features of nouns and pronouns in the contrast of two works and a balanced corpus. The linguistic features (number and gender) have been related with two themes, the 'group and individual' and the 'feminine and masculine', and are further interpreted in terms of mothering and feminine consciousness. By adopting linguistic approach, our study provides quantitative and qualitative evidence to verify the established themes and arguments of these literary texts.