The two pieces of writing that will be compared are The Yellow Wall Paper and The Bell Jar. Both these two pieces of writing are very similar yet very, different. The two main characters being compared are Jane from The Yellow Wall Paper and Esther from The Bell Jar. Both of the women in these stories let the expectations of society get the best of them. The expectations of society drive both these women to the point of becoming almost insane. Both these women just want to be as good as everyone else but it just isn’t possible for them. Also these women let others control their fate. These two characters can be very different as well. As society changes Esther from The Bell Jar has more flexibility of what choices she wants to make, then Jane …show more content…
The story is about a woman named Jane. Jane lets her imagination and what people have told her not to do drive her wild. She moves with her husband into a house that was abandoned for quite some time. The house was not in the perfect condition a typical house buyer would want. The house consisted of rooms that could tell a story because of the things left behind. Jane becomes fascinated with the wall paper in a specific room. She believes the wall paper is torn because something is trying to get out of it. Jane believes that she is constantly seeing an apparition of woman around the house, which only lets itself out at daylight. While Jane’s husband discourages her of these thoughts, it only makes it that more intriguing for Jane to have these thoughts. The Bell Jar takes place in the 1960’s. It is a story about a girl named Esther, who must follow the ways of society in order to be successful and accepted. Esther lets society get the best of her. Society then leads her to the point where she believes she is no longer capable of doing anything. She realizes that she can make her own choices, but society may not agree with them. Esther believes that if she disobeys the rules of society it makes it that much harder for her to survive and be
In "Miss Brill" and "The Yellow Wallpaper", the plot for both short stories consist of a female who is suffering from isolation. The short story "Miss Brill", the main character, who is an English tutor, wears her fur stole to the park. Every Sunday she attends the park to watch the live performances from her special seat. She believes that she is a part of the performances to a point where, "Even she had a part and came every Sunday"(Mansfield 268). Yet, one day she attends a performance and she is subjected to ridicule by a young couple sitting next to her. After, she returns home dejected and lonely. In "The Yellow Wallpaper", the narrator develops depression after the birth of her baby. Her husband, John who is a physician, misdiagnosed
Many people on this earth will commit a sin, they find they wish they had not, and 1 in every 5 Americans suffer from a mental illness. In a story named “Young Goodman Brown” by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, the people in his story have all sinned and meet with the Devil. Then in another story named “The Yellow Wallpaper” by the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman the main character is suffering from a mental illness while her husband, a psychiatrist, tries to help her, but in doing so only makes her condition worse. Throughout both literary texts of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Young Goodman Brown,” the authors show numerous entries of Gothic Literature. And although “Young Goodman Brown” and the “Yellow Wallpaper” share similar Gothic elements, the two stories are very much different.
Both stories were written different years, but both are written about women in the same era. When women went against the norm during the era the stories were written in they were often looked down on. Especially, Emily, who never married and because she was never married she was constantly judged by the women and men in her city. During that time it was odd for women not to be married. Emily eventually found someone, but it was known that he was a homosexual. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper was told what not to do by her husband and his sister. She was forced to write in secret, for
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.
The greatest similarity is between the female protagonists of each story. Each woman is desperately searching for freedom, but not allowed to have it. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the female protagonist depressed. To treat her sickness, she is sent with her husband to live in a haunted mansion that is supposed to make her better, but it only mak...
In both Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrators are stuck in situations where the emotional burden takes over their psyche. Each protagonist suffers a mental disjunction from reality. The narrator in “The Things They Carried” recounts on first-person events taken place in the Vietnam War. O’Brien tells of the various missions his company takes part in, as well as depicting the death of his fellow team members. The multiple deaths in O’Brien’s tenure begin to weigh heavily on his mind in his post-war adjustment as he struggles to adapt to life back home after his best friend’s death. “The Yellow Wallpaper” features a narrator that suffers from nervous depression and cannot
The two societies found in The Yellow Wallpaper and Othello are both patriarchal in nature; the stories themselves take up the issue of women’s oppression in each society. Patriarchy “is defined as the source of women’s oppression and gender inequalities in which men, as a group, dominate women as another group” (Johnson as cited in Ravari 155 ). Male superiority is demonstrated in the two texts in the way female characters serve and obey their husbands, and how the male characters patronize and cause detriment towards the female characters. Although there are similarities in the effects and consequences the women feel, the differences in culture, era and location of the two stories causes a discrepancy in the experiences of the women from
The Bell Jar is an autobiography of a female sophomore. The girl-Esther, who is 19 years old, came from suburban area of Boston. As she had talent writing skills, she was invited to New York to serve as guest editor in a national fashion magazine office. In her one-month stay in New York, on one hand, Esther was cautious and conscientious to learn from an able and efficient female editor-Jay Cee, and she dreamt to follow Jay Cee’s successful step. On the other hand, she met various men and women in her colorful social life. These experiences reminded her of her life in women’s university, especially her relationship with her boyfriend- Buddy Willard. As the recollection often interweaved with reality, they brought Esther perplexity, discouragement and lost. Esther could not even more figure out the significance of reality as well as the goal of her own life. When her life in New York came to an end, Esther came back her hometown to spend the summer vacation with her mother. However, a new incident hard hit Esther- she was rejected by the writing course that she was given high expectation by professors in her university. The conservative atmosphere in the town made Esther feel days wear on like years. Esther denied completely that all achievements she got in past 19 years, and she even felt doubtful and terrified toward the future. Facing such heavy pressure, she was broken down totally. Since she was lost at that time, she tried to put an end to her life. After she was saved, she received psychological consultation in a psychiatric hospital. In this period, she rethought and relocated her position, and she rebuilt confidence step by step. At the end of the novel, Esther waited to leave hospital and she looked forward to starting a...
...re many similarities when it comes to technique, characterization, themes, and ideologies based on the author's own beliefs and life experiences. However, we also see that it appears the author herself often struggles with the issue of being herself and expressing her own individuality, or obeying the rules, regulations and mores of a society into which she was born an innocent child, one who by nature of her sex was deemed inferior to men who controlled the definition of the norms. We see this kind of environment as repressive and responsible for abnormal psyches in the plots of many of her works.
While in pursuit of a career in writing or poetry in New York City, she is diagnosed with severe, manic depression, which marks the beginning of the descent of the bell jar. After her internship ends, she attempts to commit suicide multiple times. The bell jar already begins to control her, symbolizing a tyrant in her mind. She feels horrified of what she is slowly turning ...
Depression is an illness oftentimes misunderstood by the individual and their family. One symptom of depression is isolation and in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Doris Lessing’s short story, “To Room Nineteen,” the protagonists feel trapped and unfulfilled in their ordinary lives causing them to become depressed. The battle both these characters undergo reveal many compelling similarities, despite the origin and breaking points of their disturbing thoughts and actions. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “To Room Nineteen,” the two protagonists experience isolation from the world and people around them.
The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin, and The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both have very similar themes, imagery, and a plot with very little differences. In both stories the theme of the two short stories is the ideals of feminism. Some similar imagery is the idea of freedom and living on one 's own. The plots are very similar, both woman coming into conflict with their husband, feminism, and a tragic ending. Also, both deal with the everyday problems women faced during the periods surrounding the time the stories were written. Mrs. Mallard, from Story of an Hour, and Jane, from The Yellow Wallpaper, both are trying to write their own destinies but their husbands prevent them from doing so. Mrs. Mallard and Jane both
A notable image that readers of the twentieth-century literature easily recognize is a bell jar. A bell jar is an unbreakable, stiff glass container that confines objects within its inescapable walls. It metaphorically represents the suffocating and an airless enclosure of conformism prevalent during the 1950’s American society. More specifically, American societal standards approve men to have the dominant role as they are encouraged to attend college in order to pursue professional careers. They are given the responsibility of financially supporting their families. In contrast, a women’s life in the 1950’s is centralized around family life and domestic duties only. They are encouraged to remain at home, raise children and care for their husbands. Women are perceived as highly dependent on their husbands and their ability to receive education is regarded as a low priority. Thus, the social conventions and expectations of women during the 1950’s displayed in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath correlate to Esther Greenwood’s downward spiral of her mental state. Throughout the course of her journey, Esther becomes increasingly depressed because of her inability to conform to the gender roles of the women, which mainly revolved around marriage, maternity and domesticity.
Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores a number of themes, particularly regarding the gender roles, and subsequently, the mental health care system for women. Her 19-year-old protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the vessel through which Plath poses many probing questions about these topics to the reader. In the 1950s when the novel was set, women were held to a high standard: to be attractive but pure, intelligent but submissive, and to generally accept the notion of bettering oneself only in order to make life more comfortable for the significant male in her life. Esther not only deals with the typical problems faced by women in her time, but she has to experience those things through the lens of mental illness though it is up for debate whether or not it was those same issues that caused her “madness” in the first place. In particular, Esther finds herself both struggling against and succumbing to the 1950s feminine ideal- a conflict made evident in her judgments of other women, her relationships with Buddy Willard, and her tenuous goals for the future.
The writer in The Bell Jar tries to prove that the woman is able to face the whole society and does what she wants. The woman has an ability to prove to the world her strength to achieve her desires. She does not accept the life which the society forced her to live in, but she thinks to make a better one. Although she faced many difficulties but she overcomes