Meanings of “Bad Woman” in Gwendolyn Brooks’s “a song in the front yard”: Implications of WPI Analysis for Student Mental Health Screening in South Korea

This paper analyzes how Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “a song in the front yard” is interpreted differently by the girl, her mother, and a group of pre-service teachers, using Whang’s Personal Identity (WPI) theory as a psychological framework. Unlike Freudian or sociological approaches that often generalize the meaning of the “bad woman,” this study reconstructs the poem through the lens of belief-based self-perception, showing how individuals’ differing WPI profiles lead to divergent interpretations of the same phrase. The girl, with an Idealist and Romanticist profile, reimagines the “bad woman” as a symbol of expressive freedom, while the mother, with a Romanticist- Trust profile, internalizes protective and normative concerns. Responses from pre-service teachers revealed clear distinctions in interpretation, emotional tone, and pedagogical stance based on WPI profiles. ChatGPT was used to generate predictive responses from WPI inputs, which corresponded mostly with actual student responses, highlighting both the potential and limits of AI-assisted literary analysis. Rather than treating WPI as a fixed typology, this study argues for its use as a reflective tool for cultivating flexible perspectives and understanding the mind as a dynamic construct shaped by an individual’s self-beliefs. It also critiques the labeling tendencies in Korea’s current mental health screening practices in schools, warning against the pathologization of non-normative voices. Ultimately, education must move beyond normative interpretation and become a space for helping students explore and affirm their unique ways of constructing meaning.