The Yellow Wallpaper, By William Faulkner

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

By comparing both stories together, and the characters within them, it is clear that neither the narrator from “The Yellow Wallpaper” or Harrison from “Harrison Bergeron” agree with the way they are being treated caused by their social, political and economic standpoint in society. In both stories they have opposing forces trying to dictate their life, and telling them who they are supposed to be. Within the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is being authorized by her husband john and in the story “Harrison Bergeron”, Harrison is being oppressed by his government system. In both societies of the stories, the characters are treated differently for who they are. The people to have more power in their lives, decide who they are and what they can be. The ultimate outcome of their life is up to the forces controlling them. Both characters have no way to escape the labels given to them, without going against the people restraining their potential. The characters have many good attributes to them, but are confined to being what others tell them to be. The narrator has wonderful writing skills and an active mind which allows her to be creative and have an artistic personality, but her husband will not allow her to write or be who she wants to be because he has the capability to control who she is. Harrison is a genius and an athlete who could build upon his abilities to better himself as a person both mentally and physically, but the government will not allow him to

Despite differing story lines, Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, depict the same suffering; the isolation that women have been forced to endure throughout history. In the time period that all three characters were placed, it was culturally acceptable for wives to be dominated by their husbands; their responsibility revolving around the needs of their children and those of their spouse. Most women simply did not have a means or an idea of how to rebel against their husbands. The women in all three stories are protagonists who have poor relationships of emotional attachment with their spouses. While the main character of Gilman’s story endures multiple psychotic

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 Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, both women are suffering from emotional situations. This pain is coming from the controlling male influences in there lives. The protagonist in “A rose for Emily” is a young, slender girl who is tormented by her father’s influence in her life. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane, is a wife who is suffering from post partum and loneliness. Both of these women suffer from similar emotional depression, but differ in the way they go about becoming free.

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.

Perkins Gilman aptly used narrative voice to shape the meaning of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by writing a first-person narrative about a woman who slowly loses herself to madness. This voice is one of a woman who may possibly have post-partum depression or some other form of manic depression, and her unheard cries for help. She slowly draws within herself, and allows the insanity to take over. Within the first few paragraphs we learn general characteristics about the narrator: she is middle class, as indicated by the phrase “mere ordinary people” (354); we also learn that she is married, suggested a statement about John laughing at her, something she says is only expected in marriage. Though we are never given her name, these generic aspects

In the “Yellow Wall Paper” the main character the narrator tells of her life as she sees it beginning to spiral away from her. She starts to lose her sense of reality and realizes that the life she has been living may not have been one she really was happy with. One of the influences that puts her in the predicament that she is in is her husband John and his sister Jane. Through the narrators eyes we will try see what possible diagnoses could be the cause of her mental illness. What possible treatments could have been used.

The origin of patriarchal control was defined by the productivity that men are stronger than women, so they acquired an ability to hunt in order to support the society. Indeed, these had improved the status of men. To date, patriarchal control is prevalent and still a profound issue that women live to be obedient and serve men, especially in late nineteenth century American society in which women cannot have their autonomy. In William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, both of them are elaborating the women under patriarchy either father or husband, moreover, revealing the tragedy form under this authority. In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner depicts a young woman that was rigorous controlled by her father. After her father’s demise, she was still manipulated by this invisible power. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman portrays a woman who was kept by her husband in a room with yellow wallpaper where she feel revulsion to stay in. Eventually, lose her mind. Both stories have their victims, obviously, the female characters are the victims of the patriarchal control. In both stories, Emily and Jane was approaching tragedy step by step, because the devastated of social, sexual/physical, and psychological oppression came from the patriarchal control.

Although cultural stereotypes are not often the main theme in literature, the undertones of these stereotypes shape stories and help us better understand underlying meaning. Identifying stereotypes is not always clear unless one is familiar with the culture that the stereotype implies, however when they are identified it gives the reader an advanced understanding of the text. Two literary works, Benito Cereno and The Yellow Wallpaper use American stereotypes to deepen the plot, but are used in each story in a particularly different way. Literature is a good mechanism to help explore cultural stereotypes and exploit the positive and negative consequences associated with it. In Benito Cereno, the author Herman Melville encaptures a typical American sailor who is blindly trusting of others which leads him to be ignorant to situations around him. Similarly, The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses an ignorant husband to show the harm it caused his wife, however unintentional. Melville enforces the stereotype throughout the passage to keep readers in the dark with what is actually happening in the story, in comparison to Gilman’s style of displaying the stereotype at the beginning of the story; which could be easily missed.

Charlotte draw her experience as a participant. Her real background has convinced us how she struggled whole she had in the sanitarium. Her main suffering is the relationship with her husband. In the story, she nicely illustrated her sway feelings toward him through the yellow wallpaper. For example, according to wiki information, yellow represents sickness, infection,and joy; she was considered kind of mental illness by her husband. But she thought it is his plot to chat on with other woman. She described the wallpaper that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately. This expression means the front represents her husband and the back is herself, so she had been thinking to follow him and continue marriage life

During the nineteenth century, many women were pressured to fit into their societal roles. Both Charlotte Perkins Gilman and William Faulkner wrote stories inspired by those nineteenth-century social issues. Even though Faulkner wrote his story, “A Rose for Emily”, 40 years after Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wall-paper”, both stories portray several types of nineteenth-century social issues accurately. Because of their knowledge about these social issues, Gilman and Faulkner were able to portray the main characters’ struggles. Both main characters of these stories, the narrator and Emily, become oppressed by their social environments because of the expectations that were placed on them and the values that were instilled. Because

The stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily” both have similarities, such as the lead characters are women and they are both plagued with illness of the mind. The two stories are both insights into the world of old and it helps shed a light on how women were treated, especially the ones who had mental illnesses. ”The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily” have similar female leads, they are similar because they are both been undermined by men, they both suffer from mental illness, and they both failed by family and friends who didn’t step in.

In the story “The Yellow Wall-paper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about the affects a woman’s surroundings have on her mental state. The main character, the narrator, travels to a colonial mansion in the summer with her husband so that she can heal from her illness. Because of her husband’s controlling nature, the narrator’s marriage affects her mental state. The narrator’s perspective of the story allows the readers to consider the mind of a woman who has lost touch with reality and understand her mental processes.