Comparison And Contrast Within Shirley Jackson's “

1442 Words6 Pages
No name Engl. 112-05 Professor No name 17 February 2011 Comparison and Contrast Within Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are two fascinating stories with much depth. While both stories do not share the same plot, both stories do share similar themes and symbols; however, they are also very different. There are many similarities in the literary devices both Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman use in their stories. One theme the two works share is the subordination of women. In The Lottery, the author gives the reader a hint that women are of a lower class than the men in the New England village. One example of this subordination is that the men chose the slip of paper, underscoring their leadership roles. The author also implies that the lottery winner has always possessed qualities that the townspeople found less desirable and that the person chosen was the town’s social scapegoat. For example, Mr. Summers’ wife was a likely victim of the lottery. The townspeople felt sorry for Mr. Summers because he did not have a family. His wife did not have a very good work ethic. Jackson tactfully implies that she was a former victim of the lottery. Women, it seems, are the ones most often at the mercy of the lottery. The women in the story seem to have the least amount of work ethic. The lottery’s choice of Tessie Hutchinson was easily predicted. Her lack of work ethic was displayed as she was the only member of the town to arrive to the lottery late (Spark Notes, 2008). The same theme of subordination of women, especially in marriage, holds true in The Yellow Wallpaper. In this story, the narrator’s husband is the head of the household. The husband is the one who decides what the protagonist is going to do: not write or read,
Open Document