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The Yellow Wallpaper And Roald Dahl's 'Lamb To The Slaughter'

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In the early nineteenth century, mental illness was a mysterious and confusing disease to the general public. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" are both short stories that include deranged women. Mary Maloney, the main character of "Lamb to the Slaughter," and Jane, the main character of "The Yellow Wallpaper," both experience a type of mental illness. The two characters' mental illnesses seem to be influenced by the actions and words of their husbands. Mary seems to be relatively normal at first, but after her husband, Patrick, tells her some seemingly upsetting news, Mary is overtaken by her insanity. Jane, on the other hand, has already been diagnosed with her illness at the beginning of the story, and it continues to worsen due to her husband, John's, orders. Mary and Jane's conditions of insanity occur as a result of the environment in which they live and because of the breaking points they reach at the hands of their husbands. The environments that Mary and Jane are in contribute to their mental illnesses because both women are confined to their houses all day. For Mary, she is confined to her house all day because "this was her sixth month with child" (Dahl 87). Mary has nothing better to do than just sit around all day long waiting for her husband to return home from work in the evenings because she is not only pregnant, but she is also a housewife. Since Mary spends her days alone, this could

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