No Name Woman Analysis

Women have always been oppressed, not only by men, but by society as a whole. They have been considered weak, fragile, and useless for anything besides housework. In some parts of the world, this is still true. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour,” Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman,” tell stories of women trying to come to terms with who they are and what society wants them to be. Together, these three works show the hardships of being a woman and finding one’s true identity while dealing with oppression and sexism.

In “The Story of An Hour,” Kate Chopin uses imagery and irony to show a wife’s newfound freedom and joy upon hearing the news of her husband’s death. At first, Mrs. Mallard …show more content…
When the narrator starts to describe the wallpaper, it is easy to simply think that she’s going insane, but the reader must go deeper to find the real meaning.
“ The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out,” writes the narrator. This is the first time the narrator states that the figure behind the pattern is a woman trying to get out. Sometimes multiple women. The personification of the wallpaper is meant to show how the narrator felt trapped by the standards that society had placed on her, and how many other women felt the same way. The woman behind the wallpaper is mentioned various times throughout the rest of the story, showing that the narrator was constantly longing for freedom and it was not just a one-time thought. As the narrator struggles to come to terms with the fact that the woman society wants her to be and the woman she really is are two completely different people, she slowly starts to go mad. In the end, she becomes the woman in the wallpaper, succumbing to the destiny that her true self must forever remain