The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman And Guy De Maupassant

Imagine the most exciting part of one’s day being curing for the fish, or picking the berries in the garden. Women in the mid-to-late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century lived very simple lives, and there days consisted primarily of actions such as those previously mentioned. These women had simple jobs: maintain the household, raise their children, do laundry, grow the gardens, and more. They were not held to high expectations and lived submissively to the men; women in 1890’s to the 1910’s were subjects to a patriarchal society. Authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Guy de Maupassant exemplified these roles of women in society and how what they do falls within a small circle. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about

Guy de Maupassant was another author in the late nineteenth century who addressed the lack of roles for women in society. Maupassant’s “The Necklace” is a story about Mathilde Loisel’s desire to change her economic status, ultimately causing her and her husband to spend over ten years in crippling poverty. Both of the authors of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Necklace” addressed what life for women was like in the mid-to-late nineteenth century and how these women lived in a time where there most important job was caring for their children and maintaining their households; they exemplified the time period were women lived subordinately to men and desired to do

When Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she addressed the ideology that society was patriarchal and men were in control of women. John, the unnamed protagonist husband is very controlling over his wife. The women lived with serious psychological difficulties and she could not be healed by her husband, because instead of being there for her emotional John took a logical approach and separated her from the world, leaving her completely isolated and driving her to insanity. The woman desired so much more, she saw many possibilities and was trapped inside this prison of a room. The woman showed how women in this time period struggled greatly, especially when she stated that “[she did not] like to look out of the windows, there [were] so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. [She wondered] if they all [will] come out of that wall-paper as [she] did” (Roberts and Jacobs 599). The woman imagined other women in society being prisoners of their homes, wanting nothing but to get out, like she was. She wondered if there were other women out there like her who had to tear apart walls or rooms to feel free. Society trapped women into a small circle of where their lives laid within, and Gilman exemplified how it literally drove this woman, and others, insane because they had no role in society besides