Unmasking

ABSTRACT

This article proposes to analyze the meanings of domestic patterns in modern Western culture. It starts with an analysis of the tale The Yellow Wallpaper, written in 1892 by the American novelist and social reformer Charlotte Gilman, where a domestic pattern is associated with hysteric psychological deviation. The text then moves towards an analysis of medical and architectural discourses from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, looking for moments of resonance with the association suggested in Gilman's tale. The medical discourse is mainly located around the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France, a renowned research center for the diagnosis and treatment of hysterical disorders in the late nineteenth century—home to the psychiatric theories of Jean-Martin Charcot and to the psychoanalytic studies of Sigmund Freud. The architectural discourse focuses mainly on the work of Viennese architect Adolf Loos and on the model of the Panopticon developed by British social reformer Jeremy Bentham.

KEYWORDS:

• pattern
• hysteria
• mask
• psychoanalysis
• modernism