Madness and Insanity in A Rose For Emily And The Yellow Wallpaper

Insanity in A Rose For Emily And The Yellow Wallpaper

Many of the upper class women in the Victorian era were assumed to be weaker than men, prone to frailties and ‘female problems’ and unable to think for themselves, valuable only as marriage bait. The two women in Faulkner’s and Gilman’s stories are victims of such assumptions. Emily in “A Rose For Emily” and the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” are driven insane because they feel trapped by the men in their lives, and they retreat into their own worlds as an escape from reality, and finally rebel in the only ways they each can find.

Emily and ‘John’s wife,’ the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” who is never named, both feel stifled and suppressed by the men in authority over them. Emily, as a “slender figure in white...

... middle of paper ...

...he trap that society has placed them in.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. “A Rose For Emily.” The Norton Introduction To Literature. Eds. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 7th Ed. New York, Norton, 1998. 1: 502-509.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Introduction To Literature. Eds. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 7th Ed. New York, Norton, 1998. 2: 630-642.