In class there have been many discussions over the relationships and marriages among the books we have read. When someone thinks of marriage, a fairy tale with a happy ending might come to mind, or possibly a safe haven for those looking for something stable. In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, marriage takes a turn for the worse. Marriage is no longer the happy memories in a lifetime. It can be the thing that hinders the women in these stories from developing their full potential or experiencing the world and other lifestyles. Through these texts and this time frame, we will analyze the meaning of their marriages, how they function, and the end result of both.
In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier feels trapped in her marriage with no way out. Her husband finds, “it discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and
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valued so little his conservation” (Chopin 34). Mr. Pontellier is disappointed in Edna’s lack of concern for him and that she has no interest in his life. This shows that their marriage is not based on love, but rather to have kids and a family. Even the family aspect of their marriage is not what Edna hopes for. She loves her kids one minute and then ignores them the next, she doesn’t seem to have the maternal instinct that the other mothers have. The definition of their marriage is not loving but rather the social norm. They are married because that was common and Edna is supposed to take care of the children and show interest in her husband’s affairs, but that doesn’t happen. She is already going against the norms and trying to become more individualized and away from her husband and her duties . Edna picks up and moves her possessions, things that Mr. Pontellier did not purchase, and moves them to the “pigeon house”. A home she calls her own and provides even more separation between her husband and her family (Chopin 115). On the Grand Isle, she meets Robert Lebrun who she is attracted to but knows that it is frowned upon to be romantically involved with anyone other than her husband. Edna struggles to hide her feelings along with Robert. “During his oblivious attention he once quietly rested his head against Mrs. Pontellier’s arm. As gently she repulsed him. Once again he repeated the offense. She could not but believe it to be thoughtlessness on his part, yet that was no reason she should submit to it. She did not remonstrate, except again to repulse him quietly but firmly. He offered no apology,” this shows the push-and-pull of their relationship and how even though Edna wants out of her marriage she knows she can’t without being shunned (Chopin 40). Another way Edna revolts the social norms of her family is leaving on “reception day”, the day where Edna is supposed to be answering calls and waiting for people to come to the house. Mr. Pontellier gets angry after hearing about this and leaves for the club, Edna goes to her room and throws her wedding ring and a vase (Chopin 82-83). Edna’s confusion about her marriage becomes present and she feels the torment of being trapped in her marriage. Throwing the ring was supposed to separate herself. Edna hides many emotions in her marriage because she is supposed to represent an image of perfection, at one point Mr. Pontellier describes her as, “a piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin 31). Edna later in the story feels that her independence is more important than her marriage and that going against her social expectations gives her strength, her suicide is a wish for freedom from her marriage and freedom to be an independent woman. Mr. Pontellier kept her inside and expected her to follow the social norms just like all the other women on Grand Isle, but Edna wanted more and after awakening her true desire when she was with Robert she realized what she wanted. On a more psychological horror tale, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, criticizes the role that women play within a marriage in the nineteenth-century middle class. In this short story, it reveals that gender division can keep a woman in a childish state of ignorance and may prevent them from their full development. John uses his superior wisdom and maturity as a physician to dominate his wife into keeping her there and oblivious to her true talents (Gilman 447). Their marriage consists of John “taking care” of the narrator while the narrator doesn’t know what is true about her condition and has no way of expressing herself. Like Edna, the narrator finds herself unable to do anything and feels trapped in the room with the yellow-wallpaper and her marriage.
“I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit. But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there,” she isn’t even able to visit others because John believes it will make her more “sick” (Gilman 453). The narrator doesn’t have any control of her life, John is constantly telling her what to do and what medicine to take, he also carries her around and up to her bedroom where she spends most of her time. Between John’s need to dominate his wife, and the narrator’s naiveness their marriage is one similar to Edna’s and Mr. Pontellier’s. Both marriages hindered the wives’ choices towards themselves and kept them trapped inside the marriage and their homes, but the difference between Edna and the narrator is that Edna escapes Mr. Pontellier through the “pigeon house” and later
suicide. Unfortunately, for the narrator she becomes obsessed in a fantasy where she is able to retain some control and exercise the power of her mind. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears to create the facade of a happy marriage because she believes John is only doing what is best for her sickness not understanding the real problem. Being so underdeveloped cognitively she retreats into herself and becomes insane. Through both of these stories, we can see that their marriages hindered their abilities to develop their true selves and strengths. The men in their lives kept them trapped within the marriage and in the domestic duties portrayed in the nineteenth century. Based on the evidence we can conclude that jumping to marriage as a sanctuary isn’t the best option, that letting ourselves develop and finding someone who is going to accept us and not restrict our abilities is for the best. Marriage is no longer the happy ending but a social norm/requirement and that isn’t its goal, its goal is to connect those who love each other with a legal bond.
All over the world, marriage is one of the main things that define a woman’s life. In fact, for women, marriage goes a long way to determine much in their lives including happiness, overall quality of life whether or not they are able to set and achieve their life goals. Some women go into marriages that allow them to follow the paths they have chosen and achieve their goals while for other women, marriage could mean the end of their life goals. For Janie, the lead character in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, who was married twice first to Joe sparks, and to Vergile Tea Cake, her two marriages to these men greatly affected her happiness, quality of life and pursuit of her life goals in various ways, based on the personality of each of the men. Although both men were very different from each other, they were also similar in some ways.
All over the world, marriage is one of the main things that define a woman’s life. In fact, for women, marriage goes a long way to determine much in their lives, including happiness, overall quality of life, whether or not they are able to set and achieve their life goals. Some women go into marriages that allow them to follow the paths they have chosen and achieve their goals while for other women, marriage could mean the end of their life goals. For Janie, the lead character in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, who was married twice, first to Joe sparks, and to Vergil Tea Cake, her two marriages to these men greatly affected her happiness, quality of life and the pursuit of her life goals in various ways, based on the personality of each of the men. Although both men were very different from each other, they were also similar in some ways.
In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin tells of Edna Pontellier's struggle with fate. Edna Pontellier awakens from a slumber only to find that her life is displeasing, but these displeasing thoughts are not new to Edna. The actions taken by Edna Pontellier in the novel The Awakening clearly determine that she is not stable. The neglect of her duties as a wife and mother and as a woman of society are all affected by her mental state. Her choices to have affairs and disregard her vow of marriage represent her impaired judgment. The change in her attitude and interests becomes quite irresponsible, and that change along with her final decision to commit suicide tell the reader that Edna Pontellier is not capable of making valid judgments. Had Edna Pontellier been of sound mind and body, she would not have ended her young life by suicide. The fact that she can clearly and easily turn to such an alternative suggests that she is depressed and obviously in opposition to the church. The thoughts and actions of Edna Pontellier are solely determined by her manic depressive state, her apparent repressed abuse from her childhood, and her abandonment of Christianity.
In today’s society, the notion and belief of growing old, getting married, having kids, and a maintaining of a happy family, seems to be a common value among most people. In Kevin Brockmeier’s short story, “The Ceiling,” Brockmeier implies that marriage is not necessary in our society. In fact, Brockmeier criticizes the belief of marriage in his literary work. Brockmeier reveals that marriage usually leads to or ends in disaster, specifically, all marriages are doomed to fail from the start. Throughout the story, the male protagonist, the husband, becomes more and more separated from his wife. As the tension increases between the protagonist and his wife, Brockmeier symbolizes a failing marriage between the husband and wife as he depicts the ceiling in the sky closing upon the town in which they live, and eventually crushing the town entirely as a whole.
In “The Yellow Wall-paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the unnamed female protagonist is going through a rough time in her life. (For now on, this paper will refer to this unnamed character as the “the narrator in ‘Wall-paper,’” short for “The Yellow Wall-paper. The narrator is confined to room to a room with strange wall-paper. This odd wall-paper seems to symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard must also deal with conflict as she must deal with the death of her spouse. At first there is grief, but then there is the recognition that she will be free. The institute of marriage ties the two heroines of these two short stories together. Like typical young women of the late 19th century, they were married, and during the course of their lives, they were expected to stay married. Unlike today where divorce is commonplace, marriage was a very holy bond and divorce was taboo. This tight bond of marriage caused tension in these two characters.
In The Awakening, the male characters attempt to exert control over the character of Edna. None of the men understand her need for independence. Edna thinks she will find true love with Robert but realizes that he will never understand her needs to be an independent woman. Edna's father and husband control her and they feel she has a specific duty as a woman. Alcee Arobin, also attempts to control Edna in his own way. Edna knows she wants freedom. She realizes this at the beginning of the book. "Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her (Pg. 642). Throughout The Awakening she is trying to gain that independence that she wants so bad.
Mahin, Michael J. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper: "An Intertextual Comparison of the "Conventional" Connotations of Marriage and Propriety." Domestic Goddesses (1999). Web. 29 June 2015.
...tionship she had until she was left with literally no reason to live. Throughout the novella, she breaks social conventions, which damages her reputation and her relationships with her friends, husband, and children. Through Edna’s thoughts and actions, numerous gender issues and expectations are displayed within The Awakening because she serves as a direct representation of feminist ideals, social changes, and a revolution to come.
Pollard, Percival. "The Unlikely Awakening of a Married Woman." Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994. 179-181.
“Like a river flows so surely to the sea darling, so it goes some things are meant to be.” In literature there have been a copious amount of works that can be attributed to the theme of love and marriage. These works convey the thoughts and actions in which we as people handle every day, and are meant to depict how both love and marriage can effect one’s life. This theme is evident in both “The Storm” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman; both stories have the underlying theme of love and marriage, but are interpreted in different ways. Both in “The Storm” and in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the women are the main focus of the story. In “The Storm” you have Calixta, a seemingly happy married woman who cheats on her husband with an “old-time infatuation” during a storm, and then proceeds to go about the rest of her day as if nothing has happened when her husband and son return. Then you have “The Yellow Wallpaper” where the narrator—who remains nameless—is basically kept prisoner in her own house by her husband and eventually is driven to the point of insanity.
The narrator is confined to a room with strange wall-paper. This odd wall-paper seems to symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard must also deal with conflict as she must deal with the death of her spouse. At first there is grief, but then there is the recognition that she will be free. The institute of marriage ties the two women of these two short stories together. Like typical young women of the late 19th century, they were married, and during the course of their lives, they were expected to stay married. Unlike today where divorce is commonplace, marriage was a very holy bond and divorce was taboo. This tight bond of marriage caused tension in these two characters. Their personal freedom was severely restricted. For Mrs. Mallard, marriage was a curse to be reckoned with. She knew inside that her marriage was wrong, but she could not express her feelings openly. Her husband was not a bad man, but he was in the way. After hearing about her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard comments, “now there would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men … believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (Chopin 72), Her husband definitely was a thorn in her
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
Marriage is the union of two people, traditionally husband and wife. Traditional also are the roles that women play when confined in a marriage. When a woman has had the opportunity to educate herself pass tradition and has been use to a fast-paced modern lifestyle, this role of the wife might prove to be quite onerous to mold to. Usually a time of joy, celebration, and adulation, marriage may also bring along emotional and physical pain as well as awkward situations, as the woman must alter herself to conform the traditional role of what a wife should be. Bessie Head depicts two modernized, educated women in her short stories of “Life” and “Snapshots of a Wedding”. These women are forced to change from the only lives they knew as single women to the new roles they must live up to as wives.
For Edna's husband, she is merely an object that must fulfill the central roles to which she has been assigned. He disciplines her for her "habitual neglect" of their children and her inability to properly attend to their needs (637). These actions cause Edna to become consumed with despair, as she is severely oppressed by the constraints of her husband. Consequently, she moves into her own home and embarks upon an affair which satisfies her sexual and creative impulses. Evidently, Edna's dissatisfaction with domesticity leads to the emergence of her true
Most people link marriage with happiness. Seeing all the gleeful couples gives society hope that marriage is great. However, the novel Surfacing by Margaret Atwood contradicts this common belief. Through the theme of marriage displayed throughout the story the reader is revealed to the darker side of marriage, the side in which marriage is manipulative and deceiving. Through the symbolism of the barometer, the ring, and David and Anna’s relationship, the author is able to express the overall message of the story.