Story Of An Hour Comparison
Similarities In The Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour The stories “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman even though they have two very different plots are very similar in their themes and messages. In both stories, the women are being oppressed by their husbands and find ways to deal with it as well as being portrayed as weak and inferior and they both of their minds play tricks on them by making them hallucinate. Louise and the narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper both are being oppressed by their husbands in their relationships because the husbands are in control of their lives instead of the women themselves. In Louise's case when she gets the news that her husband died in a
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In both cases what they were seeing was symbolism for an aspect of how being in the relationship with their husbands made them feel. In Story of an Hour once Louise Mallard knows the news about her husband she sits in a chair facing the window and stares into the blue sky. As she is sitting there something comes to her, it was “too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, scents, the color that filled the air.” (Chopin 288) The thing was coming to “possess” her and because she attempted to fight it away I am lead to believe that it was a hallucination of her husband and his dominating persona, also because once she stops hallucinating she began to whisper the words “escape” and “free.” In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is a perfect example of “of a housewife gone mad.” (Hudock) Because the narrator is trapped in this room that her husband put her in and will not let her leave, her hallucination is a woman that is trapped in the wall. The woman is a representation of her and she feels in the room as well as her marriage. She says the woman tries to escape the wall but the patterns are too difficult to escape. She also says the woman in the wall “takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (Gilman 9) because she wants to be set free just like the narrator. And after she pulls all the yellow wallpaper off the wall she writes ““I've got out at last, ” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back! ”” (Gilman 11) because the woman was a reflection of her and is no longer trapped so neither is
In both cases what they were seeing was symbolism for an aspect of how being in the relationship with their husbands made them feel. In Story of an Hour once Louise Mallard knows the news about her husband she sits in a chair facing the window and stares into the blue sky. As she is sitting there something comes to her, it was “too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, scents, the color that filled the air.” (Chopin 288) The thing was coming to “possess” her and because she attempted to fight it away I am lead to believe that it was a hallucination of her husband and his dominating persona, also because once she stops hallucinating she began to whisper the words “escape” and “free.” In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is a perfect example of “of a housewife gone mad.” (Hudock) Because the narrator is trapped in this room that her husband put her in and will not let her leave, her hallucination is a woman that is trapped in the wall. The woman is a representation of her and she feels in the room as well as her marriage. She says the woman tries to escape the wall but the patterns are too difficult to escape. She also says the woman in the wall “takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (Gilman 9) because she wants to be set free just like the narrator. And after she pulls all the yellow wallpaper off the wall she writes ““I've got out at last, ” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back! ”” (Gilman 11) because the woman was a reflection of her and is no longer trapped so neither is