Women Self Fulfilment

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Woman Self - Fulfillment The late 1800's were a time of repression for women. A woman was expected to conform to her husband's ideals and accept a life of being powerless. Even today, the relationship between men and women can seem unequal. The short stories "The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper" both deal with the ways women had to achieve self-fulfillment in a period of time that was unfavorable in doing so. In order to achieve self-fulfillment their lives ended in tragedy. In Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," a young woman's innermost thoughts about her life and marriage and her perception of the world are expressed through Louise, who reacts in a strange way after receiving news that her husband has been killed in a train wreck. "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance" and instead of breaking down emotionally she explores the possibilities of what a new life would bring. She realizes that her husband is no longer there to control her or tell her what to do. "There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself". She was so overwhelmed with happiness that when she found out her husband had never died she had literally died in an instant of “the joy that kills.” She so badly wanted to be free from her husband that she could not take in the fact that he was still alive so her reaction was death which is one way she will truly be free. The same ideas are explored in "The Yellow Wallpaper" where the narrator in the story is overwhelmed with feeling like a slave to their own husband and consumed by her own thoughts. She is trapped within her own mental processes constantly analyzing the "wallpaper" and connecting it with things in her life. In both of these stories each woman has a way to escape or try to make themselves feel "fulfilled"

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