“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin were published in nineteenth century and have similarities in some aspects. Both of the stories have discussed on the male-dominated society and the impact of the patriarchal society on women. The women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour” are being controlled by their husbands physically and mentally. They have been deprived the rights to speak out their own minds and forced culturally to follow and support whatever their husbands say. Both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour” have suggested that the patriarchy-centered society oppresses women and causes unfavorable effects on women, marriages and society. In “The Story of an Hour”, the ‘heart trouble’ that Louise is suffering from can be physical and emotional. Chopin vaguely indicates that the marriage between Louise and Brently is unhappy and it stifles Louise’s freedom. “She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death” (par. 13). Louise admits that Brently is kind and loving, and she, sometime, has loved him. Nonetheless, his control over her life and feelings makes her feel stressed and repressed. The news of her husband’s death actually rejoices her as she is regaining her long-lost freedom. “But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome” (par. 13) . Even though she is crying, but, from the bottom of her heart, she feels free and relieved. From the text, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life” (par. 5) and “Free! Body a... ... middle of paper ... ...Brently represents the disappearance of her newly regained freedom. She is going to live under the control of her husband again. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is ultimately gone crazy because of John’ ignorance and overconfidence. John’s bumptious treatment and care are keeping his wife from recovery. Both of the women suffer in their marriages as they are deprived of freedom and independence. The husbands are living the women’s lives. The culture and tradition cause the women stuck in unhappy marriages. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. ‘The Story of an Hour.’ Making Literature Matter Fifth Edition. 705-706. Print. Delashmit, M., and C. Longcope. "Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper." Explicator 50.1 (1991): 32. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ Making Literature Matter Fifth Edition. 954-967. Print.
So as we look at the lives of women back in the 19th century, they have the stereotypical trend of being a house wife, staying at home, taking care of kids, the house, and aiding the husband in his work. Being in charge of the household makes women have many responsibilities to take care of, but still women are often looked down upon and men who often think a women’s say is unimportant. The two short stories are about two women who have husbands that are successful and the women who feel suffocated by their lack of ability to live their own lives or make their own decisions. The two stories present similar plots about two wives who have grown to feel imprisoned in their own marriages. In the yellow wallpaper, she is virtually imprisoned in her bedroom, and does not even have a say in the location or decor of the room.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
By contrast, Louise Mallard, the protagonist in Chopin's "Story of an Hour", is a moral woman and loving wife, at least by Western standards. Her life is defined by the accepted social ideal of a husband's will as final. She is so inured to this concept that only upon hearing the news of his death does her true feeling of something "too subtle and elusive to name" (199) come forth. What she acknowledges to herself is that her marriage is not happy for her and she often resents her subservient role and "a kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime".
"The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Story of an Hour" are two very similar stories. Both deal with middle-aged women who long to attain their freedom. They share the same theme, but convey the message differently in terms of style and quality. The two stories are about women who are fighting for freedom, happiness, and the ability to be truly expressive in any way possible.
Throughout history, women have had to continuously fight for their rights and equality in society. Women have fought to separate themselves from their controlling husbands, fought to become independently accepted and have fought to create their own destiny. Within their short stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin address this search for freedom and independence. Chopin’s publication of “The Story of an Hour” in 1894 was not far behind Gilman’s publication of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892. During this time period, women were starting to fight for more social rights and social equality. Both stories analyze the social standards of this time and the oppression of women by men.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of the Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are viewed from a woman’s perspective in the nineteenth century. They show the issues on how they are confined to the house. That they are to be stay at home wives and let the husband earn the household income. These stories are both written by American women and how their marriage was brought about. Their husbands were very controlling and treated them more like children instead of their wives. In the nineteenth century their behavior was considered normal at the time. In “The Story of the Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” both women explore their issues on wanting to be free from the control of their husband’s.
MacPike, Loralee. "Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in 'The Yellow Wallpaper.’” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 201, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com.gmclibrary.idm.oclc.org/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=mill30389&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CH1420082948&asid=562f132388d74c4bd92439b5842a2fe7. Accessed 25 Oct. 2017.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both centralized on the feministic views of women coming out to the world. Aside from the many differences within the two short stories, there is also similarities contained in Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as the same concept of the “rest treatment” was prescribed as medicine to help deal with their sickness, society’s views on the main character’s illness, and both stories parallel in the main character finding freedom in the locked rooms that they contain themselves in.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Only recently with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men; society, in general; and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper and “The Story of an Hour, “ focus on a woman’s plight near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting because it is a time in modern society when women were still treated as second class citizens. The two main characters in these stories show similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problems and life in general. These two characters will be examined to note the commonalities and differences. Although the two characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that the woman in the “The Story of an Hour” is a stronger character based on the two important criteria of rationality and freedom.
Women have been mistreated, enchained and dominated by men for most part of the human history. Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was great inequality between the social and economic conditions of men and women (Pearson Education). The battle for women's emancipation, however, had started in 1848 by the first women's rights convention, which was led by some remarkable and brave women (Pearson Education). One of the most notable feminists of that period was the writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was also one of the most influential feminists who felt strongly about and spoke frequently on the nineteenth-century lives for women. Her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" characterizes the condition of women of the nineteenth century through the main character’s life and actions in the text. It is considered to be one of the most influential pieces because of its realism and prime examples of treatment of women in that time. This essay analyzes issues the protagonist goes through while she is trying to break the element of barter from her marriage and love with her husband. This relationship status was very common between nineteenth-century women and their husbands.
In the texts: “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, “The Valley of Childish Things” by Edith Wharton, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the female authors bring attention to the egregious cliche belief of men being more superior than women and of women having to be obedient, well mannered housewives. This common belief that men and society hold causes women to become discouraged to chase after their dreams, depressed from their lack of freedom, and insane, as demonstrated in the texts. The authors employ the literary devices: imagery, symbolism, allegory, and irony, to further substantiate the harm caused by female oppression during the 18th and 19th century. Although the texts are written about the oppression of women during the 18th and 19th century, it is salient to note that female oppression will continue to happen in the future due to the ingrained misconception of women being worth less than males and the dominance that many males feel they need. Female oppression is an issue that will always be talked about no matter the time
Advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men, Charlotte Perkins Gilman speaks to the “female condition” in her 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by writing about the life of a woman and what caused her to lose her sanity. The narrator goes crazy due partially to her prescribed role as a woman in 1892 being severely limited. One example is her being forbidden by her husband to “work” which includes working and writing. This restricts her from begin able to express how she truly feels. While she is forbidden to work her husband on the other hand is still able to do his job as a physician. This makes the narrator inferior to her husband and males in general. The narrator is unable to be who she wants, do what she wants, and say what she wants without her husband’s permission. This causes the narrator to feel trapped and have no way out, except through the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom.
Traditionally, men have held the power in society. Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports society’s patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts one women’s struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction to this act.
Gender roles seem to be as old as time and have undergone constant, but sometime subtle, revisions throughout generations. Gender roles can be defined as the expectations for the behaviors, duties and attitudes of male and female members of a society, by that society. The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a great example of this. There are clear divisions between genders. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century where a rigid distinction between the domestic role of women and the active working role of men exists (“Sparknotes”). The protagonist and female antagonists of the story exemplify the women of their time; trapped in a submissive, controlled, and isolated domestic sphere, where they are treated as fragile and unstable children while the men dominate the public working sphere.
In conclusion Gilman’s use of the six important literary elements and her passion for feminist and socialist issues, created a fantastic and informative short story that is The Yellow Wallpaper. Her simple yet effective symbolism allowed her readers to not only enjoy a short story but also become informed of these important issues of gender inequality. Using personal experiences Gilman was able to truly understand what women were going through the late 19th and 20th century. Thus, even as a male teenager, I was captivated and choose The Yellow Wallpaper to have a deeper understanding and analyze its literary elements used in Gilman’s short story.