Theme of Entrapment in The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper
Topics of great social impact have been dealt with in many different ways and in many different mediums. Beginning with the first women’s movement in the 1850’s, the role of women in society has been constantly written about, protested, and debated. Two women writers who have had the most impact in the on-going women’s movement are Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper are two of feminist literature’s cornerstones and have become prolific parts of American literature. Themes of entrapment by social dictates, circumstance, and the desire for personal independence reside within each work and bond the two together.
Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived and wrote around the same time during the nineteenth century. This time period, like most others, is characterized by a society which the patriarch is the center and leader of the family structure. The protagonists in each story are women, who are trapped by the circumstances surrounding their current situations within society. Each protagonist finds liberation in very different ways, each leading to a downfall that is inescapable in the society of the time period. In The Awakening, Edna begins to learn and experience things that empower her and lead her to believe that she can become more independent. The new freedom that she enjoys is only fleeting as the dictates of society do not allow for such freedom from a married woman with children. The protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper is trapped by a much different set of circumstances. Her husband believes she is mentally ill and begins to deprive her of the freedoms, such as writing, that she has previous...
... middle of paper ...
...orks could be the topic for countless doctoral dissertations. They are both intriguing and ambiguous, which leaves much up to discussion and speculation. The role of women in society has been and will continue to be a point of great debate and perpetual change. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman have influenced other great women writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, and budding male writers such as Ben Eisner. The events and experiences of one’s upbringing help to shape future writings and ideas. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman had different formative years, which are evident in their approaches to their characters and their ideas of women in society.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Penguin Putman, Inc. New York. 1976
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings. Random House, Inc. New York. 2000.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1892. Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998.
Initially, Gatsby stirs up sympathetic feelings because of his obsession with wealth. Ever since meeting Dan Cody, his fascination for wealth has increased dramatically. He even uses illegal unmoral methods to obtain hefty amounts of wealth to spend on buying a house with “ Marie Antoinette music-rooms, Restoration Salons, dressing rooms and poolrooms, and bath rooms with sunken baths.” (88) His wardrobe is just as sensational with “ shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine fennel.” (89) Gatsby buys such posh items to impress Daisy but to him, Daisy herself is a symbol of wealth. Jay remarks, “[Daisy’s] voice is full of money.” (115). For him, Daisy is the one who is “ High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden gir...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." Fiction 100: An Anthology of Short Stories. 4th ed. ed. James H. Pickering. New York: MacMillan, 1985. 426-34.
Collins, Emily. “Nabokov’s Lolita and Anderson’s The Little Mermaid.” Nabokov Studies 9 (2005): 77-100. 10 Oct. 2006. http://muse.jhu.edu.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/journals/nabokov_studies/toc/nab9.1.html
Shumaker, Conrad. "'Too Terribly Good to Be Printed': Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper'" American Literature. 57 (1985): 194-198.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both centralized on the feministic views of women coming out to the world. Aside from the many differences within the two short stories, there is also similarities contained in Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as the same concept of the “rest treatment” was prescribed as medicine to help deal with their sickness, society’s views on the main character’s illness, and both stories parallel in the main character finding freedom in the locked rooms that they contain themselves in.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 354-65. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The Story and Its Writer. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 462-473. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. The Forerunner Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s Magazine. Charlton Co., New York, Volume 1, No. 1 November 1909.
Wohlpart, Jim. American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” 1997. Florida Gulf Coast University
The story of Lolita was written in the United States during the 1950’s. Authors in the fifties were considered the Beat Generation and the movements were sexual liberation and disregard for traditional values in writing. Narratives seemed more liberated and open like Lolita because it is far from conservative and
The interpretation of Lolita still consisted on the ideas of sex and the book as well as the character became a scandal. Nabokov has rebuffed sex themes since the beginning of the book’s publishing. In his famous interview with Playboy, Nabokov rejects the interviewer bringing up America’s sexual mores with “Sex as an institution, sex as a general notion, sex as a problem, sex as a platitude—all this is something I find too tedious for words. Let us skip sex.” (Toffler). His refusal to even talk sex proved how little his tolerance was when it came to humoring the audience about sex themes and sex related questions. In an interview with CBC during the early 1960s, Nabokov is quoted agreeing with an interviewer that believes “sex has become such a cliche, so that people can’t recognize anything else.” (...) which further shows how 1960’s mentalities could see nothing else outside of the realm of sex. In the same CBC interview, Nabokov disputes sex themes more openly and admits that his writing of the book has more to do with Humbert’s artistic nature and how that alienates him and creates unattainable love (...). While Nabokov wrongly uses a young girl’s abuse as a tool of illustrating a man’s “misfortunes” of being an artist, the novel is more than what the 1960’s audience perceived it to be. Nabokov did not intend to write a book about a fetish, nor did he, according to Playboy, wish to satirize American culture. The text included more substinance than what people perceived it to be and as did the character Lolita herself, who was more than a teen temptress. His writing of the book has nothing to do about sex, although his initial theme is flawed and an important example of men’s inability to write books featuring authentic female characters, unless they are being used as tools or over sexualized. And much like Humbert Humbert, no matter how hard Nabokov tried to manipulate the text, feelings of empathy still is evoked
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. Mineola: Dover, 1997. Print.
Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Women's Issues in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2012. Print.