Feminist criticism is the way through which literature has been used to reinforce or undermine the role played by women in the society. This includes the role of women in social, political and economical activities of the society. In most societies of the world, women and the role that they play in the society has always been undermined. Their contribution and impacts on the societies have always been neglected and as such, women have not been viewed as important figures of the society.
As a result, their rights, opinions, choice and ideologies have always not been taken seriously. Due to this, women have started to use literature as a means of expressing their grievances, desires and needs. Through it, they have been able to state clearly their role and importance in the society. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman are examples of stories that have been used to show feminist criticism. These stories are discussed in this paper.
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour was written by Kate Chopin in 1894. The protagonist in this story is a woman called Mrs. Louise Mallard who has a heart problem. On learning the news about her husband`s death, her sister Josephine and her husband`s friend Richard are having a hard time in coming up with a way which they will break down the sad news to Mrs. Mallard. This is because she has a heart problem hence if the message is not passed in the best way possible, severe consequences might follow.
Both her sister and her husband`s friend are worried since they do not know the best means to pass this message to her because of her health condition. This is because it is not easy for anyone to hear and accept the news of the death of someone they loved, especially a spouse one has spent many years living together. That is why her sister, while breaking the news down to her, used broken sentences and veiled hints that revealed the theme of the message but not its real content.
We are told that, “It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing” (Berkove 153). Richard also had to be sure that the message about the death of his friend was true before telling it to the wife. That is why after receiving the news of his death, he had to assure himself by another telegram. Josephine and Richard at this point see Mrs. Ballard as weak both physically and emotionally thus taking this news is going to be very difficult for her.
On receiving the news, Mrs. Ballard broke down into tears immediately and went to her room to have some time alone. While in the room, she discovered that she was not sad but instead she felt as if she was free from her misery and will now be able to live the rest of her life for herself and herself alone.
In the story we are told that, “She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her… She said it over and over under her breath: free, free, free!” (Berkove 154). Instead of being sad, she felt relieved and free unlike what Josephine and her sister thought. This is because she is the only one who knew the suffering she was undergoing in that marriage and that she did not always love her husband.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
In this story, the protagonist, who is not named, her husband, her sister-in-law and child have moved to a summer house where she is expected to recover from a health condition that she is suffering from. Her physician had diagnosed her with post-partum depression that made her nervous all the time.
They moved into this house so that she could get solitude, peace and calmness as a remedy to her sickness. She was also not supposed to work or do anything that would affect her emotions. Although she was not for the idea, her complains were never taken seriously by either her husband or her brother, both of whom were physicians and believed that she was okay.
In this story, it is evident that the protagonist did not get a chance to air out her feeling or emotions. Due to this fact, she found it difficult to even communicate with her husband and tell her the problems that she was going through. She found it better to keep the pain and suffering that she was going through to herself since no one else could understand; not even her own husband who is supposed to support her in any issue. Due to this fact, her mental distress kept on getting worse and as time went by, she could not keep it together anymore.
Conclusion
The two stories that have been discussed above show the pain and suffering that women go through in the marriages that they are in. die to this fact, their joy, happiness and attitudes tend to change. At some time, their spouses turn to become as their enemies and when they are gone, they feel relieved. This was shown in the story of an hour when the protagonist learned about the alleged death of her husband. Thus, women have used literature to express their feelings and emotions that have been neglected by the society that is dominated by men
Work Cited
Berkove, Lawrence L. “Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour.” American Literary Realism 32.2 (2000): 152-158.
It is amazing to know how people perceive the world differently. People from various walks of life have different interpretation of daily experiences. This is so clear when discussing the issues that arise in stories by great authors. In this essay, we take a look at the perception towards women struggling to gain control over their fates as written by Kate Chopin, Merge Piercy and Gilman in their stories the Story of an Hour, Barbie Doll and Yellow Wallpaper respectively.
In the Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin presents an often unheard view about marriage. Chopin has tackled the issue of marriage and selfhood concept by portraying Mrs. Louise Mallard, as a strong woman. This happened due to her reaction when she is informed about the death of her husband in train accident.
The reader has a perception that Mrs. Louise would be greatly affected by the death of her husband when she learns it, but this is not the case. Instead Mrs. Louise Ironically feels a relieved when she receives the bad news. Her reaction probably shows that death does not necessarily cause grief to the close family members. One thing has to die for another to thrive as the death of Louise could have opened the door to a fresh new start of a life with so much freedom.
Kate Chopin seems to have a lot of things in common with her husband Louise Mallard who is also a major protagonist. They both lived during the period when women had very limited rights and privileged, prejudiced based on their gender. During this era women were required to be very submissive to their husbands. Their opinions were not regarded since women were meant to be seen, but not heard.
During those days, marriage was considered a sacred institution making divorce a rare thing. In the event that as divorce was necessary, the man would automatically have the legal of controlling of all of the property and children that he had with his woman (Hicks 1). Chopin grew up in a male dominated environment. She writes many controversial stories on abusive relationship and unhappy marriage. There were a lot of things that she did that were considered contrary to the societal norms of that period.
Mrs. Louise Mallard’s emotions changes from one state to another within an hour. She gets upset by the sad news of the death of a loved one but when she comes out of the room she seem to have already accepted the situation and adapting to the new situation. Though she is saddened by her husband’s death, she at once gets delighted by the reflection of her awaiting freedom.
Her passion for life is so evident. She anticipates for her new life in the future and how she would live as a free woman enjoying absolute freedom. As she begins to savor the sweet sense of freedom, her husband shows up at their house still breathing. On seeing him, she is shocked and dies because of the reality that strikes her. She is unable to bare the drastic change of emotion on learning that her husband was actually not dead. This will eventually deny her the freedom she has been longing for (Ostman 6).
In the poem “Barbie Doll”, author Marge Piercy makes use of four paragraphs to scornfully describe the cultural and societal expectations of the girl child from her birth, the bringing up, life and death. A girl faces some serious social problems as she grows up in the community.
These challenges include issues such as peer cruelty and societal pressure to conform to its normal and keep a certain kind of image of a woman which that society deems ‘ideal image of a woman’. A girl is shown to have a life that is full of challenges and less options to enjoy it.
The society is depicting it to begin at birth, upbringing, the girl gets married and finally faces sad death. This literary piece depicts such life as boring and very short. The poem is presented in a tone of depression and sadness, depicting the culturally unacceptable image of our society.
When this girl is born, she is “presented with dolls that did pee-pee/and miniature GE stoves and irons/and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (Piercy 4). This exposes her to unwittingly ideals and expectations of society. The girl was given toys that were designed to teach her to adapt the life of a wife which was basically that of looking.
This type of influence inadvertently pulls the girl into a different world or her subconscious without her noticing. When she hits puberty the sponge rings, sending a cascade of awareness over her. One of her classmates proclaimed to her that “you have a great big nose and fat legs” (Piercy 6). These nine simple words are not the foolish opinion of an immature classmate, but devastating news.
Her attempts to conform to the ideals that the society teaches are no longer subconscious rather deliberate. She felt bad that she did not fit in these ideals. She kept going to and fro to her friends apologizing for her “fat nose on thick legs” which was all anyone could see. To her, no one saw that “she was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (Piercy 9), which are all good qualities, but her package wasn’t perfect.
The societal pressures follow certain way of life or perception of a beautiful and attractive girl became and ultimately notion of a good woman faded away. She therefore cut her nose off and her legs too to offer them as her body and soul to the baseless societal pressures (Piercy L 12-15). She could have literally cut her nose and legs off but she sought to have them replaced by new technology of plastic surgery. This drained her physically and emotionally in attempts to get what society wanted her to get.
The fairy-tale about “Barbie Doll” depicts the society as being able to cause very destructive consequences because of the enormous pressure it puts on women requiring them to behave in certain ways of life like the looks and conduct in public. Gender roles weaken women’s self-confidence and cause havoc on their self-esteem. Piercy suggests that the creator of Barbie doll has participated actively in the male dominated society of the “patriarchal societal system” by promoting women stereotypes.
As one of the leading toy selling in US, Barbie dolls have used the strategy of idealizing the female body, such that it have turned to be an iconic in the American culture. Parents purchase these dolls for their daughters, who in turn try to attempt to imitate Barbie’s form, presentation and the values that it embodies. This symbolizes as a beautiful, though tasteless, blonde who does just anything she is told to (Beer 5).
In the Yellow Wallpaper, it shows female person undergoing “treatment” for anxiety, a condition that signifies worry. It is ironical that the doctor happens to be her own husband. She is put in a room which was earlier on occupied by a mentally challenged patient. After a few weeks, the woman starts portraying symptoms of being paranoid and experienced hallucinations regularly. All the way through the story, the woman is seen to constantly refer to the yellow wallpaper (Mikolajczyk 67).
The first issue that arises in the story is when interpreting the meaning(s) behind the wallpaper. The yellow color could possibly infer something concerning insanity which makes the woman to repeatedly refer yellow wallpaper patterns which are peeling off the walls.
More to the point, the patterns could be suggestive of chaos erupting from orderliness. It is obvious looking at the number of times she mentions the wall pattern that it has a great impact on the mental condition of the woman. She could be delusional seeing woman move behind the wallpaper, as if she wants to break out from it.
This could in fact imply that it is a ‘reflection’ of herself in the wallpaper or it she could just be hallucinating that someone behind the wall. At the end of the story, she assumes on the role of a “creeping” woman. She is seen to follow a blotch around the room and over the body of her husband who has fainted.
In short, the woman has been trapped in the paper and tormented by Dr. John’s unsympathetic heart for her condition. With three kids to take care of, the mother is attempting to find humor and reflections amidst the chaos she is undergoing. When her husband was on overnight call, she could pack up the kids and head over to the hospital for a visit. The kid could get some much needed father time and Dr. John always took a break from a very long shift.
In conclusion, the three stories clearly present the world’s perception towards women who are in constant struggles to gain control over their fates. They show us what a women’s life would have been if they remained silent without any struggle. Although they are fictions, but there is a lot we can learn from them.
Works Cited
Beer, Janet. The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte P.”That Rare Jewel.” Women’s Journal 17 May 1890: 158. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Other Stories. Ed. Robert Shulman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 20-24
Charlotte Perkins, the author of The Yellow Wallpaper, spent most of her time advocating for women’s rights. She wanted equal representation in every aspect: socially, economically, and politically. Her utmost focus was on the inequality established after marriage.
She argued that women’s obligation to remain in the house while their husbands went to work was unfair and, asserting that it barred women from utilizing their knowledge and intelligence. She proceeded to explain that the fact that women stayed at home the same way as servants could not make anyone happy.
Unless she got her freedom, nothing in the house would run smoothly. The ideology of true womanhood made women suffer in silence; however, it was phased out for the new womanhood. Gilman tries to show how men dominate the marriage institution, but in the end, what is displayed is the ways women are weak and let men control them.
The Prison Nature of Marriages
In my opinion, the owner displays her inabilities throughout the text; it is not a matter of whatever she is going through. She further claims how the man influences her decisions and that whatever man says, she has to listen, notwithstanding its validity. This displays her inabilities as a woman giving the man more power and control. The narrator seems to have conflicts with her inner self; she thinks that women should be given an option to make decisions in the family and assumes her role as a true woman.
The woman in this narration has allowed herself to be controlled and not by man alone. She has failed to recognize that she is the driver of her own life, and blame should not be put on man. Although the man tries to control her as it is traditionally, the woman has to take it as her responsibility to control herself.
The major conflict in the narration comes about when the doctor, who is also the narrators’ husband, struggles with her over the nature of her illness, which she believed resulted from her struggle with dissimilarity in their marriage institution. As a result, she terribly desires to express herself and make her complains known to the husband (Gilman, 6).
The narrator tries to express her views on what she wants to do while she is sick, but her husband insists that she must get enough rest. This brings the point of conflict between the narrator and her doctor partner. John does not believe in her wife’s creativity, and that is why he does not allow her to use her talent. It seems like he is forcing her to quit writing and focus on being a wife and a mother.
Therefore, she is not able to work her creativity and ends up drawing the wallpaper that represents a depressed woman (Gilman, 15-20). Still, the husband cannot believe her capability, resulting in the conflict. It shows how sometimes men can be disobliging to their wives and how they may lower their self-worth.
Conclusion
The narration is a display of the prison nature of marriages established by men. Marriages have locked up women from pursuing their dreams and made them useless to the community at large. Men view their wives as unimportant, just as John did to his partner, making them have no other means of escaping their roles as mothers and wives. John is simply a reflection of society and the marriage institution. The story illustrates the effects of confinement on the narrators’ depression problem.
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1973. South Carolina: Forgotten Books. Pp 1-63. Print.
The American society in the early to late 18th century was highly critical of Women and their capacity to do any work other than household work. Women were regarded as inferior creatures and expected to get married early, have children and work like a servant, cooking, cleaning and working for the house. Any attempts on a women’s part to make a career were ruthlessly put down by the male-dominated society. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman speaks of the pain, suffering, and humiliation that women underwent in the 1800s. The paper provides a discussion of the short story and analyses the theme of emotion and depression that the main character Stetson Gilman undergoes and her advent into insanity caused by the wrong treatment given to her (Boa, 1990).
Analysis and Discussion
Stetson Gilman is a young mother who is undergoing ‘post-partum depression,’ which has taken her over as she struggles with her child. In the US of the 1800s, psychiatric problem diagnosis was not so well advanced, and it was generally assumed that women with mental problems had to be encouraged to be more docile, leave other pursuits such as reading and writing, and get more involved in their family life and the upbringing of the children. Her husband, John, and brother, who are physicians are not ready to acknowledge that Stetson has a problem and refute any suggestions that she is not feeling well, but merely put down her sickness to overwork and strain (Golden, 1992).
“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? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing“. (Gilman, p. 1).
A closer examination of the above expert shows the strong control that John had over his wife. She had been given an assortment of pills, tonics, and syrups and asked to keep away from active work and her husband administered the medicine each hour, more out of a sense of protectivity than anything else. The doctor had recommended that she should get plenty of fresh air, take up exercise and eat good food.
The inactivity caused Stetson more problems than anything else, and she longed to do something creative. The attitude of all men is the same, and the author shows that even Stetson’s brother has the same attitude. The old manor to which Stetson and her husband have moved seems ghostly to her, and when she, with her romantic mindset, suggests to her husband that there is indeed something moving around, her husband very disdainfully says that there was nothing but a draught and closes the door (Gilman, p. 2).
When Stetson, her husband, and her son move into the manor, they decide to stay in the old nursery, and this place has a very depressing effect on her. The nursery was actually a big room with plenty of windows and sunshine, and the windows had bars, presumably to prevent children from falling out. But the thing that Stetson really hated was the wallpaper, and she felt intense nervousness and fear when she looked at it.
“The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and is a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others“. (Gilman, p. 3).
John, in the typical male way, is impervious to her suffering and his argument is that since there is no reason to worry, his wife should not become nervous. Though she asks implores him to at least repaper the room or even move to another place, her husband is not ready to accept this, saying that since they had leased the place for only three months, there was no point in spending money. The crazy pattern on the wallpaper is making her see new horrible things, and she feels about a spot on the paper as “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.” (Gilman, p. 5).
The various forms in the paper seem like horrible malevolent beings that seem to spy on her and invade her privacy. Once in the middle of the night, Stetson gets up to touch the paper because she feels the presence of a lady who is watching from the wallpaper.
The yellow wallpaper has had such a profound effect on her that she has started to imagine that it creeps all over the house, and in her vivid hallucination, she finds it hovering in the dining room, in the parlor, and hiding in the hall, and she feels as if the paper is waiting to get her on the stairs. She even begins to imagine that it has a peculiar yellowy smell that is hard to define. In her descent into a nervous breakdown, she imagines that the wallpaper to be filled with many women who are making the paper move “sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman, p. 10).
In the final stages, Stetson undergoes a complete nervous breakdown, and on the final day, when they would leave the house, she attempts to remove the annoying paper by herself. Her main aim is to remove the wallpaper and all the horrid things that are underneath the paper. She locks out her housemaid and begins the task of removing the paper, bit by bit. The sticky glue and the fungus make her feel as if the horrible things are still underneath and trying to move out. In the final act, she locks the door and throws the key out of the window as her husband attempts to breakdown the door (Golden, 155).
Conclusion
The short story is a good example of what depression can do to a woman. The wallpaper is only symbolic and has triggered her nervous breakdown, and the main reason is the inactivity and the orders from her overprotective husband, who wants to cloister her and prevent her from writing. Obviously, writing acted as a safety valve for her and allowed her to release her tension and depression. But since the only outlet was blocked and since her husband paid scant attention to her needs, the wallpaper acted as a trigger for her mental condition. The story was a pointer to the sad conditions of the 18th century when the creative aspects of women were put down firmly by men.
References
Boa, Elizabeth. March 1990. “Creepy-crawlies: Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.” Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory. pp: 19-29.
Golden, Catherine. 1992. ‘Overwriting’ the Rest Cure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Literary Escape from S. Weir Mitchell’s Fictionalization of Women.” Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ed. Joanne P. Karpinski. New York: G.K. Hall, pp: 144-158.
The Yellow Wallpaper is an essay written in the first-person and depicts the effects of confinement on the narrator’s health, and with nothing to encourage her, becomes preoccupied with the wallpaper placed in her bedroom.
A woman’s encounter with the wallpaper is used carefully by Gilman to exhibit the effects of feminism and individualism in a society. Gilman does this by supernaturally describing the yellow wallpaper and the woman’s near-obsession with it. Although the plot of the story borders on the state of the woman’s mental health, Gilman is bent on delivering a different message: that of individual expression. He does this by recording the progress of the illness regarding the state of the wallpaper. Women’s willing inferiority to men is exhibited when John, the woman’s husband directs her to stay in bed to aid in suppressing her imagination.
John, a physician also directs that she stop her writing. She chooses to heed her husband’s advice although she feels better when she writes. Moreover, the writing may also be beneficial to her and her family. She alludes to feeling good when she does congenial work that brings along the change. It is laughably absurd that she asks herself what she would otherwise do. She describes the room she stays in with her husband as an atrocious nursery and reckons that nothing hinders her writing although she does not have energy. The only thing she fears is going against her husband’s direction. This exhibits her lack of self-confidence and an element of inferiority.
She belittles herself and retorts that she was intended to be a source of help to her husband, some sort of confidence but is now a burden to him. It is ironical
that she says that John is right by staying out late or never coming home at all because his patients’ cases are more serious than hers but paradoxically states that John does not seem to know how much her nervous condition weighs her down (Gilman 162). This is a perfect example of what happens in today’s society where one may be fully aware of what makes him or her feel better, but because of the doctor’s authority, they end up relying on the doctors advice which may seem not to work. The woman knows what she got to do to get well but her personal insecurities, her brother, and her husband’s overbearing nature impedes her efforts of getting well. The way she describes the wallpaper is symbolic of the evolution of her psychological problem: she gets to see herself through the wallpaper.
The reader’s first experience with the wallpaper is reminiscent of the social environment the woman faces in her illness. Gilman describes the paper as dull enough to confuse the eye; pronounced to irritate and provoke study; the lame uncertain curves commit suicide plunge at outrageous angles. The curves destroy themselves in unheard contradictions. The color that is used on the wallpaper is repellant and revolts; it is a smoldering and unclean yellow that appears to fade when the sunlight slowly turns. In some places, the color is dull and lurid orange. The color on the paper is punctuated by some sickly sulfur tints (Gilman 161). Gilman notes that this must have made the children to hate it. She concludes that she also deserves to hate it. She puts the paper away when she sees John approaching. All these are used to depict how the woman feels and how the therapy she is going through is impacting her health.
A sense of inferiority and burden is portrayed when the wallpaper is said to be dull enough to confuse the eye and constantly irritating and provoking study. The lame uncertain curves refer to ridiculous suggestions that her husband makes as remedy to her mental condition. Suicide denotes her fate when she follows the therapeutic approaches suggested by the husband John. Unheard of contradictions as used to describe the wallpaper implies faultiness of her husband prescription. She talks of John saying that the solution to her woes rests with herself and that she has to use her will and self-control to actualize this dream. John advices her against letting any silly fancies run away with her (Gilman 165). Writing indeed relieves her but because of her low energy level, John advices that she directs her imagination elsewhere. Because of this, she begins fantasizing about the wallpaper. Through the wallpaper, she gets to see ‘people’, ‘scenes’, ‘colorful network’, and imaginable things on the paper.
Her persistent dream and use of her mind makes her even more confident. When looking at the wallpaper, she notices a woman who stoops and creeps about, making her feel scared. The wallpaper in this case is the society. The woman scaring her is hidden behind the wallpaper. At some point in time, the woman in the paper seems to get out at daytime and move yet most women do not creep and move during the daytime. At first, she feels embarrassed at the sight of woman moving at daytime. The woman from the paper frequently hides herself in the blackberry vines when a carriage comes, this is used to explain the extent to which the women in this society were looked down upon. This shows that the woman fears presenting herself and her opinions with utmost authority because of fear of what the society will think of her. However, she lets her imaginations to wander thereby building confidence in herself.
John does not seem to associate his wife’s getting well to the wallpaper despite the wife’s allusion to this. At last, she takes to looking at and playing with the wallpaper irrespective of what people would think of her. She finally begins to express her feelings. She talks of peeling papers she could reach for. The paper sticks out horribly, but she does not care as she embarks on destroying anything that limits her capabilities (Gilman 171). Superficially, she would be perceived to have gone insane and that her mental health may have further deteriorated, but the woman cleverly celebrates her self. This is supported by her sentiments to John that she had finally gotten out in spite of the resistance from him and Jane. She asserts that she has pushed off most of the paper from the wallpaper, in this case the society, which subdued her and will never be put back (Gilman 172). At this juncture, John faints as he cannot come to terms with whatever is transpiring. She literally creeps over John, a sign that she has finally gone on top of everything.
Gilman uses a great deal of symbolism when she uses words as ‘myself’ to position herself in the society that does not allow her to be at same level with John, her husband. Her hereditary estate, otherwise portrayed as a colonial estate is used to illustrate how ordinary people endeavor to embody colonial nobility that endows them no title. It is also denotes symbolic order of language. The mansion is made of external instruments that are representative of a prison set up or a ward that holds people with mental problems. The word ‘queer’ is also used symbolically by Gilman when there is cultural transition. With this, she calls upon her readers to know that same sex desire is a reality that exists despite the fact that it is repressed in the heterosexual set up. By this, people get to know about the existence of repression hence their queer self-recognition.
Gilman symbolically uses the noun ‘one’ to disguise her autonomy, helplessness, and inability to change the current undertakings in the society she lives in. Sickness is used to represent the breaking free from madness. Her sickness seems to result from the role that the society expects the women to perform in a society. Her sickness metaphorically refers to feminine anger. The yellow color on the wallpaper refers to the color in Gilman’s cultural era that was used to refer to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Irish and other races to symbolize their inferiority and backwardness. John and the main character’s brother symbolize the overbearing nature of men on women. They chose what is good for women.
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte-Perkins. Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?” The Forerunner (1913): 19-20.
The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story, which is related to American feminist literature. The author draws her readers’ attention to the woman’s diary and gives them an opportunity to trace back the stages of a woman’s mental breakdown.
Despite the fact that the story seems to be rather ambiguous, one is to keep in mind the protagonist’s detailed descriptions, but not symbolical meaning of “the female mind, which is supposed to be housed” (Kevanyu par. 5). So, a version written below is represented by the protagonist’s husband – John, who is a physician and explains the events his wife experiences from his point of view. Thus, let me draw your attention to John’s diary.
It seems that my wife’s mental health has become worse. She is perfectly sure that her hysterical character and panic attacks can be regarded as pathology and I cannot prove the contrary of her statements. I tried to explain her that she got tired with her own thoughts and her melancholic mood is not a disease, but one of the peculiarities of her temperament and worldview.
I am sure that she is just bored and must distract her mind from her cares; although I do not know how to arouse her interest in some things: she wants nothing. Physically she is fine and there are no reasons to worry about; however, her mental state makes me anxious. She yields to no persuasions, and does not want to communicate with people around. If she continues to assure herself that she is seriously ill, she will probably undergo a course of medical treatment for a severe depression.
Some days have passed and the situation is still the same. To be honest, I am alarmed by my wife’s irrational thoughts and ideas. I do my best to show her my love and respect, but her reaction to my friendly attitude scares me. My wife’s brother is also a physician and he tells her the same.
He tries to assure her that she is fine, but she does not believe any of us. The most frightening thing, however, I do not want to believe in, is that I take notice of some strange symptoms concerning my wife’s behavior. For instance, she is deeply concerned about the house we live in. I remember the times, when we bought the house. She was so happy! She liked our beautiful garden and spent there all the time.
She compared the house with many separate little houses, which are placed on the territory of England and we talked about strange people…I do not know what happened, but now my wife is afraid of the rooms.
She assures me that some strange creatures have settled down in our house and she feels they keep their eyes on her. Moreover, yesterday a draught opened a window, and my wife said she saw a ghost. I do not know what to do. She takes some medicine to cure her nervous condition; maybe her visual hallucinations are considered to be drugs side effect?
My wife does not want to talk. It seems she avoids conversations on her health and tries to behave normally; although I see that she hardly controls her emotions. She smiles at me, but her eyes are sad. Every day my wife goes upstairs and gazes on the wallpaper. A few minutes later she starts to look over her shoulders and just repeats “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Gilman 1).
When I suddenly come home, she jumps to her feet and starts to dash around the room. I know she tries to hide her diary, because I do not allow her to write. When she writes, the situation with her mental health becomes worsen. In my opinion the fact that she is lost in thought just aggravates her mental condition.
That is why I do not want her to write. When my cases are serious, I cannot spend much time with my wife; although I do miss her. I know that she suffers, but I really do not understand the reasons. I take care of her and try to entertain her all the time. Sometimes I think I can go out of my mind, if my wife does not stop to analyze symbolical meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She discusses the color of the paper for a week now. I do not know what to do.
Good news! My wife seems to feel better. She agrees with me that it is her imaginative power, which causes a variety of her fears. Finally, my attempts to assure her that her worldview leads to nervous weakness have been crowned with success.
I suppose that a streak of bad luck follows me all the time. My earliest assumptions seem to be wrong. A few days ago, I asked my sister to come to my wife and talk to her. I just wanted to draw my wife’s attention away from her reasoning on the house. When I asked my sister about the meeting, she told me that my wife’s behavior was unnatural.
So, when my sister came, my wife was pale and tried to hide her diary again. I cannot understand whether she deceives me or no. Moreover, the situation with the yellow wallpaper has been totally changed. My wife spends hours gazing on the walls; however, it seems she likes the interior! Thus, she refuses to repaper the room… I am confused. My wife cries most of the time and explains nothing. She is awfully lazy and for the most part keeps silence.
Yesterday, my wife asked me to take her away from the house. She did not explain the reasons of her desire and I decided not to ask about them. I think that my wife’s mental health can be aggravated with leaving; while staying at home can affect her health in a positive way.
To my mind, my wife should rest. I do not know what is going on, but I started to worry about my own mental state. This morning I went upstairs and started to gaze on the yellow wallpaper. I probably wanted to see something, which could help me understand what my wife saw…but I noticed nothing unusual: the yellow wallpaper caused no symbolical interpretations in my mind.
I cannot state for sure, but it seems I have noticed some positive changes in my wife’s character. I suppose she is getting better. She behaves normally and she is not obsessed with the yellow wallpaper anymore.
This evening I could not open the door. I asked my wife to let me in, but she refused and told me where the key could be found. I asked her what was wrong, and she just answered: “I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman 8). The yellow wallpaper – there is nothing I understand.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper, Alexandria, VA: Orchises Press, 1990. Print.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about an unnamed woman diagnosed with a nervous depression by her husband who is a physician. John, her husband, rents a house for the summer hoping that her mental condition would improve as a result of the change in environment. John adopts a unique way of treating her illness by isolating her physically, intellectually and socially.
The woman is confined into a house and is not allowed to write because John believes that this will put her health into risk. This treatment fails to work and the woman just finds herself all the time in her bedroom where she starts hallucinating and seeing women moving behind the wall.
Analysis
The woman in the story begins to hallucinate at the point when she sees something moving on the wall. She says that by watching it keenly at night, she discovers that the front part was moving and a woman behind the wallpaper was shaking it. She says that, “Sometimes I think there are great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman, 1899 p 13). The trapping of women portrays her current situation.
The woman behind the wall represents many women who are imprisoned in various states in their lives and they cannot do anything independently without being influenced by external parties like John and Jane as portrayed by the narrator when she says, “”I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane” (Gilman, 1899 p 17).
A woman behind the wall represents women who are fighting for their liberty because they are in a state of slavery and depend on various issues. The narrator identifies this with the woman behind the wall because she has been imprisoned by her situation and she has been fighting for her freedom all along. The narrator, just like the woman behind the wall, finally manages to come out of the prison she was in and says, “”I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane.
And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman, 1899 p 17). It shows that she could not suffer forever from social injustice committed against her by her husband. The same way as the woman behind the wall comes out, she also comes out of her slavery, and this shows that women can obtain freedom from social oppression they are undergoing as depicted in the story.
Reference
Gilman, C.P. (1899). The Yellow Wallpaper. Mundus Publishing.
In the story ‘the Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte, the narrator is a lady who is married to a physician and confined in a room covered with yellow wallpaper. Throughout the entire story, the narrator is emotionally disturbed and is filled with bad feelings such as dislike, loneliness, obsession, nostalgia, anger, sadness, and helplessness.
The narrator suffers from a mental condition and is angered by the fact that her husband who is a physician does not believe that she is sick ‘You see he does not believe I am sick!’ (Gilman 1). Contrary to what is expected of physicians, her husband who is a physician dismisses the seriousness of her condition and goes on assuring relatives and friends that she only suffers from ‘a slight hysterical tendency’ (Gilman 2). This makes her feel so helpless ‘And what can one do?’ (Gilman 2). The narrator also has a dislike towards her husband’s actions. He gives her drugs and forbids her from performing any congenial work ‘Personally, I disagree with their ideas’ (Gilman 2). She is also filled with sadness because of a lack of support from her husband and society in coping with her condition.
“-but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Gilman 5).
From the way she describes and interacts with the room, one can notice that she has a dislike and immense hatred towards the room she is confined in. She believes that hatred radiates from the room. “It is stripped off–the paper–in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and is a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Gilman, 9). She hates the yellow color and describes it as unclean. She also supposes that the room was a nursery school and the children studying in it must have hated the wallpaper just like her. This clearly shows that she hates the room because it confines her from the outside world and she is, therefore, unable to interact with other people (Gilman 7-19).
The narrator becomes obsessed with the mental picture of the woman. She thinks about her all the time and tries picturing her. She pictures her climbing through the paper wall and creeping during the daylight. She also pictures her getting out during the daytime, walking along the road under trees, and hiding under blackberry vines. ‘I see her on that long rod under the trees creeping along, and when a carriage comes, she hides under the blackberry vines (Gilman 23).
She is also nostalgic towards her husband’s sister. She is happy that she does her job well as a housekeeper but angry that she thinks that writing is the cause of her sickness. ‘She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!’ (Gilman 36). Her sadness sometimes results from her loneliness. ‘So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal’ (Gilman 45). The narrator says that she spends most of her time crying when no one is present but once her husband comes in, she stops ‘I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time’ (Gilman 55).
The dislike, loneliness, obsession, nostalgia, anger, sadness, and helplessness she feels makes her feel suicidal. She gets a rope and tries finding something that she can stand on. ‘But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!’ (Gilman, 58). When she is unable to hang herself, she contemplates jumping out of the window ‘To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try (Gilman 59).
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The yellow wall-paper. New York: Forgotten Books, 1973.
In this essay, I will try to compare and contrast “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman using character analysis of Mrs. Louise Mallard and the story-teller for The Yellow Wallpaper. I will compare the two characters using author backgrounds, the concept of the works, as well as the disagreement in the viewpoints, and I must say that both stories are grim, although realistically presented.
Thesis Statement
The characters of Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour” and the storyteller for “The Yellow Wallpaper” are representative of what the authors want to express about themselves and their current situation.
Discussion
There are various ways and reasons why authors write and treat their stories and the stories’ characters in certain ways that could get into the reader but with subjective, albeit, different interpretations. It is therefore necessary to infuse a little background about the authors prior to delving into their stories and characters in order to provide an insight on what could be being represented or why such matters occurred in a story.
For The Yellow Wallpaper, there had been conflicting views on Charlotte Perkin-Gilman’s motive in presenting an intrusive “wallpaper” on the story’s lead character and narrator. Nevertheless, to peek a view on Gilman herself, it was suspected that “The Yellow Wallpaper” was based on her own bout with mental illness and misguided medical treatment as when she married Walter Stetson in 1884 and gave birth to her daughter Katherine a year later, she became depressed that first year as she adapted to the domestic life of a wife. It has also been suggested that she felt pain rather than happiness when she held her baby (Kessler, 1995).
The short story was about an upper-class white woman taken by her husband’s doctor to a country estate to recover from what is presumably postpartum depression. Assigned her room and instructed to remain in bed as she had been ailing, the woman becomes obsessively fixated upon the yellow paper on the walls of the room to which she is confined. At first, she only notices the deterioration of the wallpaper, but gradually envisions movement, and eventually a woman, behind the wallpaper’s mesmerizing patterns. Until which the woman with whom she had also been able to identify with, started crawling, creeping.
There had been Lanser’ point that the narrator has “relentless pursuit of a single meaning on the wall” (420), although other critics have read the story as a critique of the so-called cult of true womanhood, an indictment of the medical establishment, and as a manifestation of Gilman’s now well-documented nativism. But Edelstein (2007) suggested that “The Yellow Wall-Paper” draws its symbolic strength from the imagery and iconography of yellow journalism in Gilman’s time as descriptions of the wallpaper throughout the story echo those used by the general public in reference to the turn-of-the-century tabloid. “Like the tabloid, the wallpaper is yellow, sprawling, and guilty of “committing every artistic sin” … Gilman’s emphasis on visual aesthetics in the story, as in her poem in the Forerunner, reflects the cultural preoccupation with the striking appearance of the sensational newspaper as well as its debasement of literary and artistic standards,” (Edelstein, 2007).
Likewise, it has been noted that the narrator’s vexed relationship to the wallpaper allegorizes Gilman’s own relationship to the journalistic community as she had been disgusted with the rise of the intrusive, money-driven newspaper culture (Edelstein, 2007). Gilman, nevertheless, was involved in the mass media both to support herself financially and to cultivate a female reading community, as such, she could not disregard the newspapers or periodicals although she found fault with the transformation of print culture. Gilman, candid about her commitment to artistic and intellectual standards, wrote “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin”.
Edelstein also proposed that as Gilman wrote “I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of” the author is pointing out that the media is aesthetically disorganized and confusing with its frenzied design represents a break from the straightforward, instructional patterns with which the narrator had been familiar (Edelstein, 2007).
However, others interpreted the story as Gilman’s treatment at the hands of her psychologist Dr. S. Weir Mitchell as paradigmatic of the patriarchal silencing of women. As the story is easily viewed as a fictional account of a young wife and mother whose physician husband takes her to the country to recuperate from a “temporary nervous depression”. It has also been suggested that the story is “a case study of the psychical consequences of the masculine refusal to listen to a woman’s words, a refusal that critics link to the more general proscription of female self-expression—literary and otherwise—within a patriarchal culture. That Gilman’s contemporary reviewers did not appear to perceive its feminist meanings was construed as lending weight to this analysis, for it fueled the call for a new, feminist mode of reading that (allegorizing the narrator’s own activity with the wallpaper) would peel back “the dominant text” to reveal “the second muted text” beneath,” (Thrailkill, 2002).
I wish, like other feminist critics, to take seriously Gilman’s own claim that “the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways.” 12 I diverge from these critics, however, in arguing that Gilman thought Mitchell’s error inhered not in his semiotics, which was underwritten by his physiological theories about the nervous disease (and which Gilman shared), but in Mitchell’s extension of the category of gender beyond a few circumscribed anatomical differences to a woman’s health, capacity, and cultural role more broadly construed. In fact, scholars who discern an écriture féminine in Gilman’s text, who locate and celebrate gender distinctions in an extra-corporeal domain of female production, replicate Mitchell’s commitment to mapping the world in terms of gender differences despite the strenuous objections of Gilman herself that “there is no female mind…. As well we might speak of a female liver.” 13 I also differ from earlier feminist readings in taking seriously Gilman’s own claim that her text had a “purpose.” I argue that recent critics have not only reprised Mitchell’s gendered logic, they have also subscribed (somewhat paradoxically) to the semiotics of psychoanalysis insofar as they privilege subtext over text, symbolic meanings overstated intentions, and sex over everything—even over Gilman’s explicit feminist commitment to decoupling sex from the issue of women’s work. (The housewife, she believed, traded sex for food, an abhorrent arrangement that made all women’s domestic work a form of prostitution.) (Thrailkill, 2002)
Another review on the story went: “an eerie tale of insanity that is uncommonly effective. Most attempts to work up insanity as “material” are ineffective; but here the progress from nervous sensitiveness to illusion, and on to delusion, is put before the reader so insidiously that he feels something of that same chill alarm for his own mental soundness that accompanies actual contact with lunatics,” (Anon., 1899)”Book Notes,” The Criterion 21 (New York), 22 July 1899, 25, in Folder 301, Gilman Papers).
Kate Chopin, on the other hand, had been a wife and a mother prior to the death of her businessman husband. Although she started to write only in the late 1890s as the short story on this topic had been written in 1894, it was only after her death that her stories were acknowledged for their feminist contents.
It had been suggested that “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin was inspired by the writing style of French Guy de Maupassant with his direct, swift, inevitable narratives, that are inexorable in their straightforward movement, as well as formulaic “trick ending”, or the sudden reversal of fortune which an author “uncorks a surprise for the reader” (Fusco, 1994).
I shall take it directly from the story as well as the background for Chopin to present my own interpretation of Chopin’s Mrs. Louise Mallard, supposedly a faint-hearted woman who sometimes loved her husband. In the day and hour of the story, it had been presented that Mr. Mallard died in an accident, and Josephine, her sister, and family friend Richards were to break the news, as gently to her as possible.
After the news of her husband’s death was declared, Josephine broke down and cried uncontrollably, and later on, went to a room where she resigned herself, alone. Inside the room, after much mourning, she realized the dawn of new life, where she would be “free at last.” This realization connotes that Josephine, although she loved her husband sometimes, was not really living her life in full, or as she would want it to.
Outside the room, Josephine had been worried that Louise would be hurting or endangering herself. But towards the end, it was revealed that Louise’s husband Brently Mallard had been alive and kicking, and far from any danger. Heart attach killed Louise.
Conclusion
The characters of Louise and the storyteller of The Yellow Wallpaper are women that are physically ailing. Both also have some sort of repressed thoughts and emotions they were not able to express. But the similarities end there.
As Louise was repressed, she knew her present standing, consciously. She knew she loved her husband, sometimes, which suggests she was not domestically happy at times. She had accepted the implication of the supposedly “death” of her husband, as well as found the long-term implication, which she earlier tried to suppress, or deny: freedom from marriage and duty as a wife (or mother). And she knew she will be fine, that she had wanted that freedom, and that she will live according to her will.
Her sudden death, nevertheless, signified another: since her husband was actually well and far from danger, her faint heart was not able to contain whatever emotional impact the “good” news brought. But good or bad, the reader is left to decide. As earlier suggested, Maupassant was one of the influences of this story form, and Louise’s death could still mean “freedom at last.”
On the other hand, the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper was strikingly similar to Gilman, who suffered postpartum depression after giving birth to her only child. The story, an interweaving of diary entries, nevertheless, pictured a healthy mother who was happy for her child, although obviously again, happy for her baby in the hands of Jennie, the capable maid.
In my own point of view, and in consideration of modern times, due to lack of background on the cause of the narrator’s disturbances, it could easily be pointed out she had been a victim of hallucinatory drugs.
But since it had been indicated that the physician-husband was aware of her unstable condition, the narrator was able to supply the problem was her mental capacity, as she herself became a product of her much despised and maligned wallpaper. At this instance, I want to believe that that yellow journalism theory of Edelstein was more convincing as compared to Gilman’s own acceptance that she wanted to reach out to her doctor Mitchell.
Both stories are tragic and realistic. Hopefully, modern situations have improved for most women, feminists or not.
References
Anon. (1899) “Book Notes,” The Criterion 21 (New York), 1899, 25, in Folder 301, Gilman Papers.
Edelstein, Sari (2007). “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Yellow Newspaper” from Legacy 24, 1 (72-92)
Fusco, Richard. Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of the Century. Pennsylvania State UP, 1994. 230 pp
Kessler, Carol Farley (1995). Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia with Selected Writings. Syracuse University Press, New York, 1995
Lanser, Susan S. “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America.” Feminist Studies 15 (1989): 415–41.
It is the extensive heritage of literature that makes our conscience shake sometimes and rethink the attitude to many social issues the way they were a century ago and the way they are now adopted in society. It is a well-known fact that women have been suppressed for years by society’s beliefs of their inequality with men; this continued up until the twentieth century and has its echoes today though to a poorer extent. However, not everyone knows what nineteenth-century women underwent as per their role in society and family. The clear notion of that is given by the shot stories of Kate Chopin The Story of An Hour, Charlotte Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper, and Alice Walker Everyday Use. It is explicitly speculated on the women’s feminist views and their steps out to the world. Though the stories have many differences, they are bound to the similarities, the one concept.
The short story by Kate Chopin The Story of An Hour is a wonderful representation of those times’ inequality of women in society which resulted in their suppression of family rules, responsibilities, and opportunities. Although the short story starts with a heart-breaking image of a woman who is suffering over her husband’s death, the next what a reader finds out is her feeling of freedom because she finally gets rid of a tyrant. To be more exact, what Louise feels is a certain freedom of society standards during the nineteenth century. She comes up to her room, locks the door, and connects herself with nature feeling more confident and self-asserted. She keeps on saying: “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin, p. 83) The story is an explanation of a “rest treatment”, and of course, a story of feminism. Interestingly, the story by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper interconnect at the point of feminism and unfair treatment, the two women protagonists truly consider themselves locked in a room
literally and figuratively, and eventually start feeling free once the life circumstances change. Mrs. Mallard had to overcome the sorrow of her husband’s overall control. Therefore, once she found out about his death, she thought no one else would be there to live for her during upcoming years. Moreover, only the previous day she was horrified to think that the life may be long, whereas now she was delighted to this though because the Mr. Mallard was no longer alive. No one was going to impose a different will on her – the short story unveils brilliant the women’s desire to rebel against society’s stereotypes. The story was first published and evoked vibrant responses for suggesting an idea of women trying to escape the imprisonment of marriage. It is clear that the husband must have loved Louise more: “the face that had never looked save with love upon her”, while her feelings are scantily described meaning he lack of tender feeling towards husband and marriage overall. It is remarkable that the language of The Story of An Hour speaks for the feelings of protagonist and the plot uncovering. Namely, when Louise’s emotions are described, the language becomes lively and vibrant with colorful images: “What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!”, while the true feelings towards husband are expressed by author as the following: “And yet she loved him—sometimes. Often she did not”. The entire short story expresses utmost hope of a suppressed woman for better future not blaming her husband but the society regime.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman is another representation of those days’ gender inequalities. The author provides that the woman allows herself to be subordinate to her husband John. Being a doctor he orders her to stay in bed, also he cuts her imagination short and what is more essential he does not let her to continue the writing, which she feels helps her feel better but she does not dare to resist. She writes: “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman, p. 160). The language chosen here is perfectly reflecting her uncertainty and evident husband’s inferiority via: “What is one to do?” It is outrageous that she considers any of her attempts to be in vain in advance, and yet she accepts this compliantly. The overall underestimation of her own dignity makes it an unbelievable contrast with Mrs. Mallard from The Story of An Hour, though the two stories express society’s inconsistency. The protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper claims: ‘I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and her I am a comparative burden already’, whereas Mrs. Mallard was full of plans to live a good life further on without a husband. The Yellow Wallpaper depicted completely different women: ready and willing o obey her husband, bother, and personal fragility. Moreover, it is impossible to avoid the woman’s description of a wallpaper: “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide-plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman, p. 161). It is her vision of not only herself but what the doctor’s therapy transforms her into. The wallpaper is a social environment for her, she imagines different colorful art works, scenes, and various people because is not allowed to waste the imagination because of the husband’s views. It is a very depictive prose of a woman being suppressed by the orders of the society.
Alice Walker Everyday Use can be considered as a perfect story with an underlying concept of heritage of African Americans, who in their turn used to fight for their equality, too. The story written in early 70s describes the efforts of African Americans to find their identities within the society. Being completely torn apart by desire to rediscover their African roots and get Americanized, Afro-Americans suffered a great deal of discrimination and internal relations’ disorder. The embodiment of the latter is the relations of Dee and Maggie, their attitude towards the heritage of African Americans. Although the sisters’ relations are complicated, Mama’s attitude is clear and is worth of deep respect. There are at least two symbols t pay attention to: the quilt and the dasher handle. She says: “In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform” (Walker, p. 412).As such, she recalls all her ancestors who contributed to her current life with dearest love and deep respect. It is amazing how Walker draws a line between the dasher handle Mama touches and her tribute to the heritage: “the dasher the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my hands… It was a beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived”, as if touching the hands of all her relatives who used the dasher handle (Walker, p. 412). Along with the description of Mama’s beliefs Walker introduces the new understanding of rebellious heritage embodied in Dee: “She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature…” (Walker, p. 409). Rebellious and powerful Dee symbolized opposition to society and the rules of percepting the heritage.
It is evident that the three stories unveiled the sufferings of three souls about the unfair treatment of their personalities. However, the three authors presented the issues in different stories, times, and concepts. While The Story of An Hour and Everyday Use are talking about the two strong woman – one of which cannot be understood due to family reasons and another because of social injustice – The Yellow Wallpaper is a representation of an average nineteenth century woman, due to whom many women could not get to the point of contemporary feminist victory. Still, the three short stories tell us about soul torments due to imperfectness of society and life in general. Women While the issue of feminism has been adopted and pushed through throughout years, it is necessary to say that women would not be so suppressed without their initial desire. The only reason for such willingness to be set free is the new century’s life circumstances. So, provided that the older social norms are the more biblical, natural and hence correct they appear to be. Therefore, who said women were suppressed and not simply misguided by the swift cultural, political, and economical development?
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Story of An Hour. 2011. Web.
Gilman, Charlotte, P. The Yellow Wallpaper. Radford: Wilder Publications. 2011. Print.
Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. 4th ed. Robert DiYanni, Ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1998. 408-413.