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Abstract This thesis aims to examine Charlotte Perkins Gilman's critique of feminine domesticity in her autobiographical story The Yellow Wallpaper and Utopian fiction Herland to delineate her radical feminist and socialist view of turn-of-the-twentieth- century America. My thesis begins from the survey of American feminist scholars' criticism of the two texts over the last three decades to see how they establish Gilman's works as feminist "cult texts." By adopting Nancy Armstrong's view of the formation of modern domesticating culture, I interrogate Gilman's strategy of battle against the contractions of modern gender distinctions and the limitations of the middle-class womanhood. In Chapter One, I explore how Gilman represents an ambiti