The lack of freedom in both stories lead to a tragic ending, especially in the “Story of an Hour”. In Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” Mrs. Mallard is overjoyed on the inside because due to her years of lack of freedom, she feels as though she is finally free after she hears that her husband, Mr. Mallard died in the train accident. Although, as it turns out that in the end, he isn’t really dead. This leads to Mrs. Mallard’s apparent Heart-Attack when she sees him walk through the doors, which killed her inner joy. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator’s husband has both physical and mental control over her.
In, the authors, Charlotte Gilman and William Faulkner, respectively, have placed both figurative and literal elements of confinement upon the characters. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the wife of a reputable doctor is placed within a mansion and is isolated from work and social contact. This was done in hopes of curing her mental illness. Her husband, John, forced her to abide to his treatment even though she believed that the treatment was causing her to become worse than she was before. In “A Rose for Emily”, Emily’s lover, Homer, has also confined her to her house but does so in a different way.
The narrator tells us in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?” (Gilman 66). She suffers from a nervous disorder that her husband does not think is significant problem. In line 12 of the story, the narrator says “So I… am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (Gilman 66). From the way she describes it, her disorder affects her more than her husband realizes or gives her credit for. In “The Story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard has a “heart trouble” that apparently needs to be watched to some extent because Chopin wrote, “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin 516).
Compare and Contrast Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” are two short stories that hold many similarities and differences. Both of these stories are based on women who go from being depressed and lonely to insane. As a girl Emily’s father rejected all of her boyfriends causing her to never marry and become the talk of the town. The narrator of Gilman’s story who suffers from depression is forced to stay in her bedroom where she becomes delusional. Both of these stories portray many similarities and differences in the setting, characterization and symbolism, and most of all, how men have isolated these women from the real world driving them insane.
Similarly, the short story is discussing death as Addie Bundren is very ill and instead of her children fearing for her death, Cash, her oldest son, has dedicated all his carpentry skills in making a coffin. Even though the woman has been extremely ill and her death is expected, Vardaman, one of her sons, does not accept her mother’s death and as a result, he makes holes at the top of the coffin. This is evidence that death is not acceptable although inevitable (Waisala, 1996). Imagery is used in both literary works although with different meanings. The narrator in the poem uses the image of her husband to keep her father’s memories, as she does not accept the fact that her father
The reader is not actually told how she died, the only explanation given is she fell ill in her house and died as a result. Faulkner explains that the whole town went to her funeral because she was a fallen monument for the town, but then goes and says the women just went to see what was in her house. The next death revealed is the death of Colonel Sartoris, who was dead for a decade but Emily refused to believe it. Faulkner then introduces the death of Emily’s father; an event very important to the story. Also mentioned in the story is the madness and death of Emily’s great- aunt, old lady Wyatt.
The Household magazine quoted the later nineteenth century that while the housekeeper (female figure) “does so much for the comfort of others, she nearly ruins her own health and life” (qtd. in Hartman). This was especially true of the opposition demonstrated in The Yellow Wallpaper. The first few pages of the short story revealed the character as a proper Victorian-era woman; oppression and objection were soon exposed as she became ill and not properly cared for by her husband, the doctor. There was an inner struggle shown in her thoughts of “he takes all care from me, and I
The narrator proves that her husband is oppressive when she reveals how afraid she is of him. She says, “There comes John, and I must put this away—he hates to have me write a word” (Gillman 41). Likewise, in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” it is perceived that the main character Louise Mallard is oppressed by her husband as well. Though it is never stated outright, the way she reflects on her husband, Brently Mallard, proves that he oppressed her just as Gillman’s narrator was oppressed. Louise is informed that her husband has been killed in accident, and
Her unsuccessful and violent father moved the family many times, and her older brother was favored by her grandfathers’ will. By growing up in this type of household, she thought that marriage life was dangerous for women. As she grew older, events in the lives of her family and friends only strengthened her views that marriage was often hazardous for women (Miller par 3). This influential time of her life proved to be for the better: this pushed Mary toward self-educating and to write. In her novel, “Mary: A Fiction” (1788), a women dies from fever after she accepts the hopelessness of her life.
In Gilman’s story, the narrator’s husband, John, passes out when he sees his wife completely insane creeping and crawling around the room trying to figure out the wallpaper. On the other hand, in Chopin’s story, the wife, Louise, who was ecstatic about news of her husband’s death, realizing she was finally free to live life on her terms, saw her husband walk in the door and the sudden disappointment resulted in her death due to a heart attack. The women in both stories feel that the men intervene in their lives so much to the point where they feel like the men are living their lives for them. The oppression between one another in each couple led to the insanity of one woman and the death of another. I believe that if they didn’t try so hard to live each other’s lives and gave themselves some freedom and time apart they could have avoided ending both stories with a character on the