Control and Manipulation in A Rose for Emily and The Yellow Wallpaper

602 Words2 Pages

In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper, the two main characters exhibit behavior that some readers may consider unusual or even totally crazy. These two women are having a difficult time adjusting to the many changes taking place around them. In the midst of these changes, they face the struggles of being women such as post partum depression and love and rejection from men. Such problems become so overbearing that each woman ends up in their own delusional world which in turn, leads to their isolation and insanity. Gender issues, love, hate, insanity and isolation, are thematic connections in both stories and are important components of how each woman functions throughout the story and how each character fares in the end.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman, whose name we never learn, is being treated by her doctor husband for a condition that he simply describes as “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman, 313). She is placed in a room in which she is to have no stimulation in order to rest, also known as the “rest cure”. Durin...

Open Document