Comparing the Plots of The Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour

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When we compare contrast the two stories "The Yellow Wallpaper" vs. "The Story of an Hour”. If we first look at the similarities that they have, they are both about women who are controlled by their husbands, and who desired freedom. But both women had different reasons for their freedom. It sounds as though both husbands had control over their lives and both women had an illness. But I don’t believe the husbands knew their wives were so miserable. So as we look at the lives of women back in the 19th century time 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 thinks a women’s say is unimportant. The two short stories are about two women who have husbands that 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. She is forbidden to work and write, as she says “I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition” (Gilman8). She is forced to spend almost every moment in her room. She is not even allowed to have visitors, as he does not allow her to have any sort of mental or physical stimulation. She has even been forbidden to leave the home supposedly to allow her to rest and recover her h...

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... excited about what she will finally be able to do with her life. She actually understood that she will finally be able to live for herself, but she finds out he is not dead her grief comes back as is what kills her. How sad can that be for these women to feel that they have no other option out of their marriage.

In conclusion both short stories were great at allowing us the reader to see the way that women were repressed in their society in the 1900s. We don't hate the men; we just wish women did not have to be so subservient. Freedom is achieved in very unconventional ways in both of these stories, but the kind of freedom these narrators achieve is not available to most women of this time era.

Works Cited

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 2011. Print.

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