Stephanie Rasch
Mrs.
English 1020
8 February 2016
Comparing and Contrasting a Rose for Emily and Yellow Wallpaper
Reading a story about doom and gloom or better yet, a story with gothic elements leaves most readers feeling a bit depressed once they are finished. It may be because the story uncovers memories that the reader had once forgotten, or it could simply be a sense of empathy for the character; this stands true for the captivating writing by William Faulkner “A Rose for Emily”. Faulkner is not alone in is his writing style, Charlotte Perkins Gilman also allows readers to feel these same things in her story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Many upper class women during the Victorian era were seen as inferior than men, and unable to think for
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Emily Grierson, the main character, had never been the most outgoing woman. Many of the townspeople assumed that the Grierson’s thought they were held to a higher standard than other’s in the community. Faulkner allows the audience to interpret many things throughout the story by leaving open doors and not going into much detail. This allows readers to fall deeper into the story because they begin to imagine things the way they see them. Being socially awkward Emily Grierson stayed to herself for much of her life until she met a man that was doing work on the sidewalk outside her home. Romance formed, and the whispers flew throughout the town. Many suspected that the man that Emily wished to marry had ran off, but years later townspeople would come to find that the man was indeed still with Emily only dead upstairs. What happened to him? Readers can only allow their imagination to …show more content…
"The Yellow Wallpaper" has straight-forth chronology, allowing the reader to understand and experience the events as they happened in an orderly fashion. "A Rose for Emily" has confusing chronology requiring the reader to put the events together themselves and make sense of what happened at the end of the story. Because Emily's life story is told in reverse order and specific dates are not used for events, it creates difficulty in establishing the chronology of her life (Moore 129). Each story tells of how two women descend into madness, one by post-partum depression over a series of timed events and the other by trying to control events that had happened in the past. Although the chronologies of the two stories differ, both stories are effective in portraying what the authors wants the reader to
"The Yellow Wallpaper" tells the story of a woman living in the nineteenth century who suffers from postpartum depression. The true meaning implicit in Charlotte's story goes beyond a simple psychological speculation. The story consists of a series of cleverly constructed short paragraphs, in which the author illustrates, through the unnamed protagonist's experiences, the possible outcome of women's acceptance of men's supposed intellectual superiority. The rigid social norms of the nineteenth century, characterized by oppression and discrimination against women, are supposedly among the causes of the protagonist's depression. However, it is her husband's tyrannical attitude what ultimately
Barbara Angelis stated “Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away” (Angelis, BrainyQuote). This statement reflects the theme of isolation and how one can truly understand themselves through self-reflection and time spent in loneliness. In the short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, both female protagonists, experience a time of seclusion leading to self- realization. Hence, both of these pieces of literature illustrate the troubles of women in a male-dominated society. As a result, both characters experience oppression by overbearing male influences and are physically and emotionally
The Story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a great expression of women’s oppression in the 19th century. The story introduces readers to a woman frustrating in her life and suffering from a nervous depression and her marriage as the yellow wallpaper is causing her a real insanity. Having a background about the timing and the setting that the story is written in helps the reader to internalize the whole meaning of the story and understand its important details. The story is told by a narrator using an anxious tone, and she is being angry and sarcastic at the same time. The woman mentions that her husband has taken her to a summer vacation. So, the story takes
In the short stories “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner and “The Yellow Wallpaper”” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonists experience mental illness, loneliness, feelings of being in control of their lives, and feelings of being insane. Both main characters struggle against male domination and control. The two stories take place in the late 1800’s - early 1900’s, a time where men’s place in society was superior to that of women. Each story was written from a different perspective and life experiences. “A Rose for Emily” was written by a man and told in third personal narration, while “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by a female and told in first person.
In William Faulkner’s story Emily started out as a vibrant optimistic young girl who turned into a plump, mysterious old woman. Her father, Mr. Grierson, was a controlling, intimidating man in her life. He consistently foiled Emily’s efforts to find a husband. While reading, this text stood out to me, “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip..” Faulkner uses imagery here to show the dominating power Emily’s father had over her. In Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator who
In the story, “A Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator tells her story of her life living with her husband and she comes off as a distressed, morose wife. In “A Rose for Emily” Emily is struggling with keeping a tradition in her family and is also and also distressed. Both women deal with the struggles of their husbands who do not give them attention or treat them well. They both show similarities in their qualities of life. In William Faulkner's, “A Rose for Emily” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” both have female characters who have to endure and overcome struggles of loneliness, isolation, insanity, and depression as the female protagonist.
In both short stories the main character is judged by the surrounding people: Emily as a conceited, ill woman, and the unnamed narrator as a “sick”, depressed woman. In “A Rose for Emily” the townspeople were extremely nosey and very judgmental about how people should live there life. Watkins argues “The contrast between Emily and the townspeople and between her home and her surroundings is carried out by the invasion of her home by the adherents of the new order in the town” (509). Also it is displayed sometime after Emily’s father died when she went to the druggist and ordered arsenic to kill rats (Faulkner 78-79). “…The next day we [the townspeople] all said, ‘She will kill herself’; and we [the townspeople] said it would be the best thing (Faulkner 79). In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the unnamed narrator is judged by her family and friends. In the introduction of the story the unnamed narrator reveals that her husband, also a physician, belittles her illness and her general thoughts of life (Gilman 408). “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own
William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” are two short stories that incorporate multiple similarities and differences. Both stories main characters are females who are isolated from the world by male figures and are eventually driven to insanity. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the unidentified narrator moves to a secluded area with her husband and sister-in-law in hopes to overcome her illness. In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily’s father keeps Emily sheltered from the world and when he dies, she is left with nothing. Both stories have many similarities and differences pertaining to the setting, characterization, symbolism.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose For Emily” both have insanity when they stay in a
A suspenseful tale of tradition versus change is told with the help of literary elements in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily. Foreshadowing and symbolism develop Emily’s tragic fate in a way the reader is exposed to how deeply death and sociatal change have effected Miss Emily. Faulkner displays how effective these elements are for a short story to truly have an impact on the
In comparing Alice Walker’s story “The Flowers” with that of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” there are similarities and differences. The main difference in the stories is the way the characters react to the deaths. There are similarities such as the main characters of both stories personally face a dead body, both stories share the symbolism of flowers, and both present a theme of death.
In the eighteenth century, Gothic story was an extremely popular form of literature, and it has been a major genre since then. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner are both Gothic horror stories consisting madness and suspense. The Gothic horror story carries particular conventions in its setting, theme, point of view, and characterisation. Both Gilman and Faulkner follow the conventions of the Gothic horror story to create feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense that are essential for compelling stories.
In “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Faulkner and Gilman employ point of view to question gender roles and mental health. Faulkner uses a third-person point of view in order to narrate the story from the perspective of the town. The perspective of an outsider looking in on Emily’s life highlights her lack of control as a woman and later, a lack of control she has over herself. The distant narrator creates a barrier to fully understanding Emily’s character and reflects how the town does not truly know her and her secrets. In contrast, Gilman uses a first-person point of view to narrate from the protagonist’s perspective. The utilization of an unreliable narrator allows for more understanding of the protagonist’s character, but less understanding of her situation as a whole. Moreover, the protagonist only writes when her husband John is not around which provides further insight into her deteriorating mental condition and the lack of control she has as a woman. Faulkner and Gilman use different narrative perspectives to achieve similar results. Each point of view hides or highlights the female character in order to reveal the struggles and insufficient help they receiving. These stories provide commentary on common issues for women and mental illness for their time period.
Placed in a room of yellow wallpaper the protagonist, Jane, fights the battle of nonfiction versus fiction; Symbolic Order versus Imaginary Order. John, representing social order by only following practical ideas, is in an uneasy relationship with Jane which shows the weak bond between her and reality. Given her isolation, the words that she writes at first constitutes her thoughts, then as her mental state diminishes, her subconscious starts to make up her journal, giving importance to Suess’ ideas that language is the key symbol of women’s inner experience of postpartum depression. Psychotic symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations appear to have formed, and were controlled, before the
Later through the novel Miss Emily met her lover, which she later murdered. She lived with his remains till her time came. However,