The two stories that I liked the most out of the short stories we have read so far and that I found have many things in common are, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the "Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe. Both stories do not have similar themes, but their character development is very closely related. In Poe's work, the main character is a man and in Gilman's work, the character is a woman, but both characters are clearly dealing with something mentally. The women in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is dealing with some sort of mental illness the throughout the whole story. She is seeing women inside the wallpaper. In the "Tell Tale Heart", the man is also dealing with a mental illness, that we as the readers are also unaware
When we compare contrast the two stories "The Yellow Wallpaper" vs. "The Story of an Hour”. If we first look at the similarities that they have, they are both about women who are controlled by their husbands, and who desired freedom. But both women had different reasons for their freedom. It sounds as though both husbands had control over their lives and both women had an illness. But I don’t believe the husbands knew their wives were so miserable. So as we look at the lives of women back in the 19th century time they have the stereotypical trend of being a house wife, staying at home taking care of kids, the house, and aiding the husband in his work. Being in charge of the household makes women have many responsibilities to take care of but still women are often looked down upon and men who often thinks a women’s say is unimportant. The two short stories are about two women who have husbands that successful and the women who feel suffocated by their lack of ability to live their own lives or make their own decisions. The two stories present similar plots about two wives who have grown to feel imprisoned in their own marriages.
In the “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is extremely uncanny due to the reader’s inability to trust him. Right from the beggining the reader can tell that the narrator is crazy although the narrator does proclaim that he is sane. Since a person cannot trust a crazy person, the narrator himself is unreliable and therefore uncanny. Also as the story progress the narrator falls deeper and deeper into lunacy making him more and more unreliable, until the end of the story where the narrator gives in to his insanity, and the reader loses all ability to believe him.
The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado are two stories written by Edgar Allen Poe in the 18th century. Both of these stories are primarily focused on the mysterious and dark ways of the narrator. Since these stories were written by the same author, they tend to have several similarities such as the mood and narrative, but they also have a few differences. For instance, the characteristics of both narrators are different, but both stories portray the same idea of the narrator being obsessive over a certain thing.
The stories “Shouldn't I Feel Pretty?” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” feature a dynamic protagonist who undergoes a character development which reveals the consequences of oppression caused by societal standards. Gilman crafted the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the purpose of exposing the tyrannical role of gender roles to women. In the story, the narrator suffers a slight postpartum depression in the beginning, but her condition gets progressively worse because her husband John believes “that there is nothing the matter with [her] but temporary nervous depression-- a slight hysterical tendency” (331). He concludes that the best treatment for his wife is for her to be “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she is] well again” (332).
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros, and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid are riveting short stories that focus on the roles of females in a world dominated by unmitigated male dominance. The Yellow Wallpaper is about a subservient woman who is sick and prescribed the rest cure by the will of her husband. She disregards her own physical and emotional wellness, allowing her husband full control of her actions and health until she eventually loses her sanity. Woman Hollering Creek focuses on a woman named Cleófilas who marries a man that later begins to inflict physical and mental harm upon her. However, She does not leave her relationship because she is stricken with love for him. Moreover,
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s bodies of work, Gilman highlights scenarios exploring traditional interrelations between man and woman while subtexting the necessity for a reevaluation of the paradigms governing these relations. In both of Gilman’s short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Turned”, women are victimized, subjected and mistreated. Men controlled and enslaved their wives because they saw them as their property. A marriage was male-dominated and women’s lives were dedicated to welfare of home and family in perseverance of social stability. Women are expected to always be cheerful and good-humored. Respectively, the narrator and Mrs. Marroner are subjugated by their husbands in a society in which a relationship dominated by the male is expected.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 33-37.
Many times people tend to allow their thoughts to have an overtake in which it clouds what is actuality. Some can revoke from their right state of mind and make their own make-believe world with these thoughts. Authors, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edgar Allan Poe both demonstrate this perception in their short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator murders the old man he lives with because he is disturbed by the man’s eyes. Similarly, in The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is dealing with depression, and feels that she is being watched by the wallpaper and starts to study it and decoding the meaning. Hence, these two characters start to analyze their thoughts in a way where they become
The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin, and The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both have very similar themes, imagery, and a plot with very little differences. In both stories the theme of the two short stories is the ideals of feminism. Some similar imagery is the idea of freedom and living on one 's own. The plots are very similar, both woman coming into conflict with their husband, feminism, and a tragic ending. Also, both deal with the everyday problems women faced during the periods surrounding the time the stories were written. Mrs. Mallard, from Story of an Hour, and Jane, from The Yellow Wallpaper, both are trying to write their own destinies but their husbands prevent them from doing so. Mrs. Mallard and Jane both
The Scarlet Letter and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are similar in certain aspects, however they differ as well in many others.
There is a thin line between obsession and the black pit known as insanity.. Although obsessions may differ, the end result is the same the obsessor falls victim to their infatuation. Gilman use isolation to trigger the narrator’s obsession in The Yellow Wallpaper, while the narrator in Poe’s, The Tell-Tale Heart, is consumed by the eye of a man without a trigger. Obsession and insanity go hand in hand almost always, and in both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Yellow Wallpaper by Edgar Allan Poe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman respectively, the narrators give a first person point of view account that shows the reader their journey to insanity and the destruction of their mania.
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, and their isolation from the world by dominant male figures, which leads them to insanity.
Although both protagonists in the stories go through a psychological disorder that turns their lives upside down, they find ways to feel content once again. In Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, damp room covered in musty wallpaper all play important roles in driving the wife insane. Gilman's masterful use of not only the setting, both time and place, but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to process the woman's growing insanity. The narrator develops a very intimate relationship with the yellow wallpaper throughout the story, as it is her constant companion. Her initial reaction to it is a feeling of hatred; she dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but does not attribute anything peculiar to it. Two weeks into their stay she begins to project a sort of personality onto the paper, so she studies the pattern more closely, noticing for the first time “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman). At this point, her madness is vague, but becoming more defined, because although the figure that she sees behind the pattern has no solid shape, she dwells on it and
Edgar Allen Poe’s a genius of innovation. He uses the ideas that were common concerns of the time to revolve around in his short stories. Edgar Allen Poe grew up in a rough time when both his parents died, 1811. At a young age Poe was placed with a foster family in which he was treated without any respect. He took the ideas of mental illness to a sophisticated example in his short story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” “The Tell Tale Heart” is written in the gothic style that helps establish the surreal theme. Poe’s whole purpose in writing short story is to address the idea of mental illness which he portrays in his main character. Through his writing of the short story “A Tell Tale Heart” he addresses the idea that criminals were getting away with the idea pf insanity as there escape.
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story that dives into the mind of an insane man. The story only features five characters. There is an old man with a blue eye, the crazed killer, and three police. The story is narrated by the nameless murderer. It is his attempt to justify his behavior and to prove to the reader that he is not crazy. As the story goes on you come to the realization that he is actually insane. The characters in this story are complex, interesting, and elaborate.