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Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin wrote their two separate short stories, "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Story of an Hour," within two years of each other in the 1890s. Because both of them were dealing with a similar theme, the control of women, there are a number of similarities in their plot, symbolism, characters, and other similar aspects of literature.
In the late 1800s, women had few choices in life. If they decided not to marry or could not find a husband, they had to live at home with their parents, teach, become a nanny or, in at worst, become a prostitute. In both the "Yellow Wallpaper" and "Story of an Hour," the women wanted to change their lives and the control their husbands had over them. At the end of each story, they do break away from society's restraints -- ironically, one through a mental breakdown and the other through death.
Both stories utilize a very similar plot, setting, and symbols to come to their unfortunate endings. Each of the women is described as a very sensitive character, as females were characterized during this era. In the story "Yellow Wallpaper," the female narrator's physician says that she has a "temporary nervous depression," which would have been called post-partum depression today. In "The Story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard is afflicted with heart trouble. However, these illnesses are not actually why these women are treated as they are. It is...
For example, she edited feminist publications in San Francisco in 1894 and helped with the planning of the Women's Congresses of 1894-95. At the congress she met Jane Adams, the social reformer. Charlotte also toured the United States, lecturing on women's rights. Throughout the subsequent lectures and written works she was adamant about the need to reform the status of women in society. "Women are human beings as much as
Her mother gave her little affection, believing she would never know the pain of rejection if she never experienced love. (Vosberg para. 13) The clear need her character has for a family and for overt family support, as well as the suspicions that develop in her mind about the others in the house, reflect this sort of youth in many ways. The enclosed world of the protagonist is a representation of
Weir Mitchell, is an allegedly 'wise' man of medicine" (Hume pp). The woman considers her child lucky because he does not have to occupy the room with the horrible wallpaper and stresses that it is impossible for her to be with him because it makes her very nervous (Hume pp). She believes that the room was once a nursery because of the bars on the windows and the condition of
.. With these materials and with the aid of the trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche." In "The Cask," both insanity and murder operates to create a feeling of the grotesque all throughout the story. Moreover, these themes were symbolically "concealed" by Montresor's cultured personality (to hide his insanity) and the cask of Amontillado (to hide his murder of Fortunato). While Poe uses both themes
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" writing styles; James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" compare to my own life. Modernism vs. postmodernism Over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, American literature began to turn inward. Instead of looking to outer manifestations of the human character, American authors began to use interior monologues as a way of creating a narrative arc. Stories such as
Medical Misunderstandings and Gender: “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a brief psychological study of a woman slowly going mad over the course of an imposed rest cure, prescribed by her physician-husband. The story illustrates the extent to which limited knowledge of the female psyche and a refusal to treat women as intelligent, independent beings ironically produces the types of behaviors the psychological
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