The stories, “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” both display how external dominance, isolation, and judgment from the outside world may cause one to lose their right mind. In both stories, the main characters begin to sink into further isolation from the outside world, leaving reality in the past.
The point of view of each story is told from a firsthand account of the events that occur. In “A Rose for Emily,” the story is told from an outsider’s point of view, someone who has watched and observed all that is written down. Perhaps the narrator is one of Emily’s past lovers or someone who has heard these stories simply from small town gossip. Either way, we immediately trust this narrator because they are speaking directly to the reader. Faulkner uses words such as “we” and “everybody,” a communal point of view. In doing so, the narrator automatically appears to be more reliable because this is what “everybody” thinks.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” also has a first person narration. However, the story is told from the main characters diary. Everything that we read consists of Jane’s feelings, thoughts and consciousness, or unconsciousness. Since we are reading what Jane has written in her diary, the story is told in present tense.
The setting of “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place in what I believe is a mental hospital. The reader quickly realizes the lack of stability that Jane possesses. Jane is given complete authority in the telling of the story, however in reality, she has very little control over what she’s allowed to do. John, her husband and physician, does not let Jane think for herself. “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special attention” (Faulkner 341).
In both stori...
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...Jane had hung herself with the rope right in front of the door and she was “creeping” over him (John) with her shoulder against the wall, her neck bent looking over at him when he fainted.
I enjoyed reading and studying both of these stories in-depth. I appreciated how the authors took the main characters circumstances to an extreme and didn’t reveal the outcome until the very end. Both had the same cause (isolation) and effect (insanity), however both authors had their own interpretation for their stories. That’s one thing I enjoy most about fiction, two people can read the same story and have different interpretations, and nobody can tell you that one way is better than another.
Works Cited
Charters, Ann. "Part One: Stories." The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. By Charlotte P. Gilman and William Faulkner. Eighth ed. 314-51. Print.
“To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try,” (Gilman). There are an extraordinary number of stories written about women that go insane for certain reasons. Two of those stories are, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. Both stories are about women who are driven insane by situations that are happening in their lives; both women turn to isolation for different reasons. Both A Rose for Emily by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner show similarities and differences in dysfunctional lives.
In the story “A Rose for Emily”, Emily Grierson the main character lives in a house where a horrible stench lingers. The stench began at the time of her father’s death thirty years prior. She was rarely seen outside of her home after his death. Her husband was then suspected of “abandoning” her. No one had entered her house for the last ten years nor had Miss Emily left it. The stench was found to be from her father’s dead body and her husband’s of which she had been sleeping with since she killed him. In the short story “Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character Jane was dealing with a slight nervous depression. Her and her husband John rented a small house in the country side in hopes of recovery. Her husband believed the peace and quiet would be good for her. In the house, she is confined to bed rest in a former nursery and is forbidden from working or writing. The spacious, sunlit room has yellow wallpaper with a hideous, chaotic pattern that is stripped in multiple places. The bed is bolted to the ground and the windows barred closed. Jane despises the space and its wallpaper, but John refuses to change rooms, arguing that the nursery is best-suited for her recovery. Because the two characters, Emily and Jane are forced to become isolated, they turn for the worst. Isolation made the two become psychotic. Jane and Emily became irrational due to their confinement. Being separated from social interactions and also their lack of abilities to participate in daily activities caused insanity upon the two characters.
The Story and Its Writer by, Ann Charters. Bedford Press. 1999.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story that follows part of the life of a woman in the 1800 's in a diary-like format. The story follows a woman who has moved into a house while waiting for the previous one to be remodeled. She has just had a baby that she is not allowed to see, and her husband continues to keep her locked in a room unless she has an escort. In this era women were seen as delicate objects that were prone to intense emotion and in need of constant control by their husbands the escorts and ability to lock her away were, at that time, deemed appropriate ways to deal with his wife’s depression after birth. Strangely the wife was not forced to run the house, but the husband had his sister come and do this as well as take care
Jane is often very inconsistent about when she likes her husband, and when she hates him. She seems to constantly battle with the idea that her spouse is actually helping her when he tries to prevent her from doing things such as writing (Hume 6). Jane also seems to be fearful of her husband and even states so “The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John,” (Gilman 963). Jane also talks of how she is afraid...
In the stories “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, talk about how two women are experiencing the same emotional situations they have to endure. Both of these stories express the emotional and physical trials the characters have to endure on an everyday basis. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” it shows a woman who is oppressed and is suffering from depression and loneliness. In “A Rose for Emily” it is showing the struggle of maintaining a tradition and struggling with depression. Both of the stories resemble uncontrollable changes and the struggles of acceptance the characters face during those changes.
Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer – An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.
Although on the surface The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story about one woman’s struggles with sanity it is not. In truth, it is a story about the dominant/submissive relationship between an oppressive husband and his submissive wife. The husband, John, pushes his wife’s depression to a point quite close to insanity. The narrator seems to destroy herself through her overactive imagination and her urge to write. When they arrive she seems well in control of her faculties, but by the time they are readying for departure, she has broken down. Flawed human nature seems to play a great role in her breakdown. Her husband, a noted physician, is unwilling to admit that there may be a real problem with his wife. This same attitude is mirrored in her brother, also a physician. While these attitudes, and the actions taken by the two doctors, seem to have certainly contributed to her breakdown, it seems that there is an underlying rebellious spirit in her.
The story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ is one of intrigue and wonder. The story was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it happens to be the story under analytical scrutiny, hence the title as well as the first sentence. The characters in the story consist of the narrator, Jennie, the wet nurse, the narrator's husband John, and the women in the wallpaper. In the story, the narrator and her husband, as well as her newly born daughter and the nanny for the daughter, take a summer trip to a house away from the city. The husband and brother of the narrator are physicians, and neither believe that she is sick, they say “there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency...”
Studies In Short Fiction 18.1 (1981): 65. Literary Reference Center. Web. The Web. The Web.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
As the story begins, the narrator's compliance with her role as a submissive woman is easily seen. She states, "John laughs at me, but one expects that in marriage" (Gilman 577). These words clearly illustrate the male's position of power in a marriage t...
Charters, A. (2011). The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (8th ed.). Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin's.
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.
The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman focuses on a young woman’s psychological downfall and her fascination with the wallpaper within the house she and her husband are living in. The woman begins to believe that the wallpaper is coming alive, which leads her to become confused with reality and fantasy. Gilman selects the crazed woman as the narrator of the story. Furthermore, Gilman uses first person point of view to effectively convey the woman’s emotions and feelings during her mental decline.