Haunting Perennial Girlhoods: Infantilization and the Transnational American Gothic from Gilman to Césaire

The Gothic conceit of American womanhood as a nightmarish form perennial childhood assumes new layers meaning when viewed in transnational perspective. Haunting portrayals infantilized women-children give canonical works like Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ an unlikely kinship with postcolonial texts Paz’s La hija de Rappaccini and Césaire’s Une tempête. While echoing critique patriarchal superstructures, Paz Césaire also confront white women’s role upholding systems supremacy, slavery, (neo-)imperialism. Taken together, Gilman, Paz, speak to the shifting significations staying power unending girlhoods literature.