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Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour

Decent Essays

During the period that the two short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour,” were originally written and published countless females had no freedom and were confined due to male dominance and a lack of feminine freedom. The two authors are Charlotte Gilman Perkins, who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Kate Chopin, who wrote “Story of an Hour,” they have numerous similarities that can be compared but also have difference throughout their writings. Within theses two short stories, both authors express their growing troubles of feminine freedom and male dominance. The main female characters of both stories express a desire to be free from different components that include males being the dominant figure over women. In the …show more content…

Within “The Yellow Wallpaper” the author says, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition...” (648). This has relevance because it expressed the narrators want for freedom but she is repressed and her husband tells her what she can and cannot do. She cannot help but feel the way she does, and so the move she makes at the end, focusing on the house instead of her situation, marks the beginning of her slide into obsession and madness due to her husband trying to completely control her life. The narrator does everything that she can take her mind off of being trapped in the room by herself all day. One of the main thematic components that changes throughout the story is how she occupies herself, “So I will let it alone and talk about the house” (648). She tried to pass it off as she does nothing but talk about the house, but what actually made her go insane is believed to be the way that she watched the wallpaper, “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was” (653). This is arguably the moment in the story at which the narrator has truly lost her sanity; this is due to the fact of her being suppressed from intellect and creativity as a

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