Similarities Between The Yellow Wallpaper And The Lottery

Oz Jensen Ms. Emfield World lit 9 B 26 march 2024 “The Yellow Wallpaper” & “The Lottery” Comparison Essay The lottery in Shirley Jackson’s “The lottery,” is a good thing that pushes people forward to try to be remembered, by constantly reminding people of their mortality. Both “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, & “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, share themes of hopelessness that foreshadow future events in the book, not to mention the characters who evolve towards desperation, and an ending that doesn’t satisfy, due to a lack of resolution. Both of these stories are very similar in their approach to how people seem to be possessed by seemingly benign things: a wall, & a simple tradition. The themes of the short stories “The

Women now are seen as powerful and hard working, but it hasn't always been like that. Women were degraded and underestimated throughout their lives. Men were the bosses, they treated their wives terribly without thought. Now women are looked up to, but they had to go through rough patches first. “The Story of an Hour,” “The Lottery,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” all conveyed the way women were treated throughout the text, an ironically women were the authors of all these short stories.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator stays at a house with her husband John, and his sister Jennie, to help cure her nervousness. The narrator is under strict regime during her stay at the house, due to her husband, who is also her physician. You would think that a physician would treat an ill patient with the upmost care, but that is not the case in this short story. John forbids her to write or have any visitors that are too stimulating. He makes all the decisions for her, and eventually, she’s driven insane.

The Yellow Wallpaper and The Lottery are connected by concepts such as tradition, self-autonomy, and societal norms. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a feminist short story in which the narrator goes insane while dealing with extreme postpartum depression. During this period, she increasingly becomes more infatuated with the yellow wallpaper which covers the room. As the story progresses the unnamed narrator hides her growing obsession with the wallpaper from her husband, until one night after experiencing torment while seeing images she rips the wallpaper up and has truly gone insane. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a story that highlights a town’s adherence to following tradition.

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.

In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Gilman, the main character seems to be trapped in a controlling relationship. Jane, the wife, distraught with a mental illness while her husband dismisses her claims. John, Jane’s husband, controls Janes every move and refuses to let her write or do any physical activity. For Jane, writing is a stress reliever, a way to escape from reality. Since Jane’s husband wants her to stop expressing herself, so Jane creeps around her husband, and this makes her exhausted. Jane’s new escape is studying the wallpaper. Soon, the wallpaper haunts Jane, making her obsess over it. This obsession becomes unhealthy and contributes to Jane going insane.

The black spot drawn on the deciding slip of paper is black to represent the death it brings. The pieces of paper that are lifted away by the breeze are symbolic of the ease with which life can be taken. However, is also symbolic of vast civilizations that were doomed to eventual failure for believing in and acting on tradition and not living according to the word of God. Readers see that even as Tessie is being stoned to death, she does not question the reasoning behind the lottery. She questions why it should be she that has to die.

Soon, the narrator merges with the trapped woman in the wallpaper and they tear the wallpaper. " In the second half of The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator struggles to free the woman in the wallpaper as she fights to free herself from her life of servility as a mother and wife." ( Esposito, Freedom in The Yellow Wallpaper). Ironically, John witness his wife's insanity and faints. In "The Yellow wallpaper", John is being supportive towards his wife.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Gilman writes about a woman who suffers from temporary nervous depression as diagnosed by her overbearing husband who becomes her doctor. The husband, John, is condescending towards his wife when she questions his diagnosis. Therefore, to get away from the confinement of not being able to speak for herself, the woman secretly writes in her journal as a sense of relief. The woman then becomes fascinated and engrossed with the yellow wallpaper that hangs in her bedroom as a result of her isolation. She comes to the realization that a woman was trapped inside the wallpaper, so she must tear it down to set the woman free. The act of tearing down the wallpaper alludes to the fact that the narrator feels she

It is only as the unnamed narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” slips further into obsession and insanity does she begin to understand that she is not in total control of her life. The narrator begins to see a woman confined by the wallpaper and knows that the woman is a prisoner. She becomes fixated on freeing

But the problem is that not that no one lives in the area, John just does not want to be surrounded by his own wife. The reason why the story is called the “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it was distracting her from becoming well because the wallpaper was revolting. While she is recovering, she records in her journal how she truly feels about John, her condition, and the room. The narrator is distracted by the wallpaper and it is not helping her condition. The reason why this is so disturbing is because it’s yellow and torn up.

In the grips of depression and the restrictions prescribed by her physician husband a woman struggles with maintaining her sanity and purpose. As a new mother and a writer, and she is denied the responsibility and intellectual stimulation of these elements in her life as part of her rest cure. Her world is reduced to prison-like enforcement on her diet, exercise, sleep and intellectual activities until she is "well again". As she gives in to the restrictions and falls deeper into depression, she focuses on the wallpaper and slides towards insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story written from a first-person perspective about a young woman's mental deterioration during the 1800's and

The installation of restrictions on the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” demonstrates the constraints placed on women to conform to a certain identity in society. As well as, the negative effects those restrictions have on her health. To add on, John places constraints upon the narrator to conform to an ideal woman’s role as a wife by compelling her to give up her hobbies and obey his orders. As the story progresses, John turns down the narrator wishes of living in the room “downstairs that opens onto the piazza and had roses all over the window” (Gilman 2). Due to this, the narrator loses touch and

   "There comes John, and I must put this away- he hates to have me write a word" (p659). As evident by the above quote, Gilman places the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" as secluded as she could be; she is placed in a large house, surrounded only by her husband and by little help (Jennie), when it is unfortunately clear that her relationship with her husband is based on distance and misunderstanding: "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so"(p 663). Gilman further confines her narrator as it becomes clear that the poor soul has absolutely no one to talk to; that is, no one who can understand her. The narrator is cornered by her

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator and her husband clash over how the wife should act. While it seems like she has a mental illness, readers may interpret it as she will no longer obey her husband or society’s view on how to be a normal housewife. The more her husband tries to convince her that she is fine and continues to tell her what she should be doing, the more the narrator begins to