Challenging the Status Quo
In American society today, women and men enjoy equal freedoms and equal rights. As well, mental illness is treated both seriously and more effectively, and is being studied more than ever. The view of women and mental illness has shifted dramatically from those in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonists experience gender stereotyping and live in a society where there are certain expectations of women all the while they suffer from mistreatment due to the lack of understanding of their mental illness. In “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” William Faulkner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenge the role of women and the stigma
…show more content…
In turn, this emphasizes the lack of understanding of mental health during the time period. 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. Faulkner and Gilman use
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from post-partum depression, undergoing the sexist psychological treatments of mental health, that took place during the late nineteenth century. The narrator in Gilman’s story writes about being forced to do nothing, and how that she feels that is the worst possible treatment for her. In this particular scene, the narrator writes that she thinks normal work would do her some good, and that writing allows her to vent, and get across her ideas that no one seems to listen to. Gilman’s use of the rhetorical appeal pathos, first-person point of view, and forceful tone convey her message that confinement is not a good cure for mental health, and that writing,
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 Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story told from the first person point of view of a doctor's wife who has nervous condition. The first person standpoint gives the reader access only to the woman’s thoughts, and thus, is limited. The limited viewpoint of this story helps the reader to experience a feeling of isolation, just as the wife feels throughout the story. The point of view is also limited in that the story takes places in the present, and as a result the wife has no benefit of hindsight, and is never able to actually see that the men in her life are part of the reason she never gets well. This paper will discuss how Gilman’s choice of point of
In a struggle to retain what they believe is tangible, two very different, yet so analogous women are introduced in the diverse domains produced by two authors. The first, Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” where the narrator is a woman from an upper middle class upbringing who’s taken to a house by her husband for their summer vacation where she begins to feel confined and the later, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” where Emily is the daughter of an influential man who does become confined to her house after her father passes away. Although their stories are written by two very different people, the women share an eerie resemblance as they begin to fall into an insanity driven by fixation. To explore and understand these connections, one must look into themes and symbolisms to further magnify the foundation of their stories.
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.
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 stigma of mental illness in addition to the oppression of women are battles that are still being fought in society today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper’ which depicts the story of a woman who has recently had a baby and whose husband has moved them into a summer house rental in the country in the hopes of helping her to recover from her mental ailments. Through a nameless narrator, Gilman uses a series of diary entries to portray the story of a woman suffering from mental illness who is prevented from getting the treatment that she requires due to being oppressed by the men in her life which is attributable to the constraints of gender roles set by society which results in the narrator’s descent
Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman has written a surprisingly horrific story that includes themes of suppression of women, exclusive confinement of women at home and the negligence of mentally ill patients (especially women). She expressed and conveyed multiple messages across the story on men’s oppressive forces towards women (especially women under marriage in vulnerable mental states). After writing the story of The Yellow Wallpaper, she was known for writing the story in an indirect way based on her experience with her husband (Charles Walter Stetson) and her physician. Gilman was known for putting down a century-long struggle into a horrific and psychotic short story; she mainly describes how a the main character of the story was constantly mentally torn by the dominating forces of her doctor-husband.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s brilliant work, The Yellow Wallpaper, readers explore the consequences of the ignorance of mental health, as well the underlying story of Gilman’s suffering to mental health in nineteenth century America. In this psychological tale we are introduced to a woman facing a mental illness in the late 1800’s writing secretly about being belittled about her health by her husband, John, a doctor, who subjects her to bed rest and isolation to the real world to recover. As she loses touch with life outside of the house, she begins to obsess with the women she sees behind the yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. I believe the author 's true intent of the story is not to be simply thrown away as a psychological thriller, but also to comment the lack of recognition Medicine heldhold on the patients’ opinions, especially women.
“The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded,” noted Gustave Flaubert. This is proven true when comparing The Yellow Wallpaper and A Rose for Emily, written in 1892 and 1930, to A&P, written in 1961. When evaluating the stories The Yellow Wallpaper and A Rose for Emily, it is easily noted how women are valued in the nineteenth and twentieth century, poorly. In these stories, men are seen as the superior sex. The women are degraded to the extent that they all are said to have mental diseases that deem them crazy.
In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses an interesting means in which to allow the reader into the mind of the narrator: a woman who conforms under the pressures of not only society but also her husband. The narrator experiences a mental break after struggling with the urge to rebel against expectations placed on her to be an ordinary, healthy woman and not what she really is: a woman suffering postpartum depression at a time when postpartum was not considered a legitimate condition. Gilman manipulates her usage of the point of view -having the story told through a journal, having the perspective as first person, and having the breakdown of
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a vivid literary work that captures the reader by allowing them into the mind of the narrator, enabling the reader to experience the physiologically traumatic main character point of view. Gilman uses explicit details and imagery of the wallpaper, which clearly identifies the (adj) of the mental state of the narrator. The story also brings up several feministic issues which were a major problem in the nineteenth century. The Yellow Wallpaper depicts how women’s roles were viewed at that time and how society viewed mental illness. Through the use view of first person narrative, the protagonist distraught mental illness becomes more and more apparent. As the story unfolds we watch the woman struggle with society’s imposed roles and her attempt to recover from her illness.
In A Rose for Emily has a character named Emily who is a girl who is isolated from the world. In The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant it has a character named Mathilde who wasn’t living the life that she wants to live. Emily and Jane both have being spoiled in common, wanting something they can’t have, and disappointment; however (the way they play varies they experiences them in different ways) although the characters vary in the way it applied. Emily and Mathilde were both spoiled people in their stories.
From the beginning of time, the world has arguably treated women as unequal to men in relationships, media, literature, and more. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” are no different. Though the authors of the two short stories are of different gender, both stories convey a similar message concerning women. “The Yellow Wallpaper” revolves around a woman suffering from temporary nervous depression. Against the woman’s better judgment, John, a physician and her husband, prescribes the rest cure, which forbids any activity or work, as treatment. Confined to one room, the woman becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper and eventually becomes what her husband strived to prevent.