In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies?

In Jhumpa Lahiri’ s “Interpreter of Maladies”, Mina Das and her husband are put into an arranged marriage, where essentially she is told to love and live the rest of her life with a man in which she barely knows, all because that’s what her society expected of her. Societal expectations for women are also brought up in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” where the main character is seen as mentally weak and is overall degraded because she has postpartum depression, which is misunderstood. She is expected to be a good mother, and with her illness she is not seen as one and needed help from her husband who treats her like a child. She is expected to do as she is told and go along with what she is told to do, even though it ultimately
He takes her away to the countryside and locks her away in a room that would have driven even a healthy person mad. He cuts off all ties with the outside world by locking her in the eerie room, and the consequences of this is that she is actually driven ma45wqewrad. In the 1890’s a woman’s first and last job was motherhood, that was mostly all the woman were considered good for. Science was not as advanced either so when the main character has a child and develops post-partum depression, her husband sees it as something that requires the “rest cure”. When placed in her room the narrator describes it to the audience as something so unpleasant, it foreshadows the trouble it will bring. She states, “It is a big airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways…I should judge for the windows are barred for little children” (Gilman 365). She starts off by talking about the room this way to help visualize the setting in which she was forcibly placed. The narrator also goes on saying how “the color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the sow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (Gilman 365). She continues to talk about the room but more specifically the wallpaper in such an intense manner to
The marriage itself is not what one would expect from a couple. In fact, the story opens up over an argument in which the parents Raj and Mina are arguing over who should take their daughter Tina to the bathroom. In a very immature way “Mr. Das pointed out that he had given the girl her bath the night before” (Lahiri 409). This not only shows a level of immaturity within the marriage, but it shows a lack of care for the child over a simple task of taking her to the bathroom. The marriage continues to have a light shed on it when the couple show signs of distance between each other and their children. This is demonstrated when Mina does not hold her daughter’s hand when leaving the restroom, when she only buys rice for herself and does not share, and when she spends most of the car ride painting her nails and ignoring her daughter until she could not anymore. Mr. Kapasi the tour guide even made a point of noticing that they did not act as a couple when the narrator says “Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not parents. It seemed that they were in charge of the children only for the day; it was hard to believe they were regularly responsible for anything other than themselves” (Lahiri 411). Mr. Das is only interested in his telephoto lens, and Mrs. Das is only