It is evident that the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Mrs. Mallard in “The Story of an Hour” represent the authors’ personal lives and oppression in women. Evidence suggests that Gilman based “The Yellow Wallpaper” off her own life. In 1884, Gilman happily married Charles Walter Stetson but soon became distant and depressed. Stetson was very overprotective and affectionate which caused her depression to severely worsen, and ultimately caused their marriage to end. As Carl N. Deglar states in his article, “Her illness became more severe, however, and ended in a total nervous collapse” (39-42).
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the protagonist, Miss Emily Grierson, is faced with challenges that leave her no choice but to find a way to escape the internal struggle of loneliness created by her own actions, leading to self-inflicted destruction. Looking in on the surface, the female character is imprisoned by the repressiveness of her father. While he played a huge role in causing Emily’s mental state to deteriorate, it was ultimately the consequences of her own self-control that confined her mind. Because of her poor choices, Emily lives in misery instead of rescuing herself from such damaging chains of sorrow. Throughout the text, it is evident that the overall conflict in “A Rose for Emily” was driven by self-deprecation
Elizabeth Bennet has to face the attitudes of aristocrats due to the lack of societal recommendations. Emma Woodhouse appears headed for a life of spinsterhood occupied with the care of her aging father. These four women are continuously finding a tricky road toward happiness, sometimes in love and money, or love of money, but it is the gradual revelation of his characters in comparison with each other that displays Austen's writing at its
The narrator is left alone, unloved, and uncared for. Also by the tone of the the poem the reader can tell that the speaker was not loved and cared for after the mother died. As the speaker refers to the father as “daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man”(Clifton 271). The reaction to the disease of loneliness
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the female narrator is greatly troubled by the suppression of her imagination by her husband and her ultimate isolation due to this subordination. These feelings are reflected through the author’s use of setting as the narrator’s dreary and malicious descriptions of the house and the wallpaper mirrors her emotional position. Throughout the reading, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s in-depth loss of touch with reality as she sinks further and further into her own reality. As she becomes more isolated, her descriptions of the house become more abstract as she begins to focus on the wallpaper and starts to see herself as being hidden behind it. In the beginning of the story, she describes
Debatably, I still believe that these two deaths are related to suicide. After Layla married, she became unhappy, being apart from her true love in an arranged marriage. (Ahmadzai and Emal 1) Majnun, her actual love moved to the desert, where he devoted his life in solitude. He was lonely not only with a broken heart but also as an outcast to society. (Ahmadzai and Emal 1) When Layla's parent died with her husband she was sentenced or forced to make a promise to spend two years of isolation and solitude mourning, she compromised with the death of a broken heart.
“A Rose for Emily” is a short story by Williams Faulkner tells the sad story of a woman who has had an extremely sheltered life. It is tragic story in which Emily’s hope and dream for a normal life is lost. Williams Faulkner wrote this sad story that can be related to anyone who has had hope and aspirations for themselves but unable to fulfill it. Emily is kept at home by her father and is almost hide from the world. It is not said in the story but is seem like Emily’s mother is gone and no longer around.
With “A Sorrowful Woman,” Gail Godwin crafts a tragic tale of what appears to be an overburdened mother and a loving husband desperately trying to hold their family together as they cope with the wife’s deteriorating mental and emotional state. The text strongly supports the idea that a mental illness drives her irrational behavior. However, mental illness is not the only factor behind her actions--it is not even the primary cause. She has suppressed her own sexuality and denied her attraction to woman, creating an environment that allows her mental illness and addiction to grow until they consume her. “A Sorrowful Woman” examines the detrimental effects of the mother’s repressed sexuality on her small family, as well as how addiction and isolation hasten her descent into madness.
At the opening of Chopin’s story, the reader is presented with an unremarkable protagonist, whose characteristics — outside of her heart trouble — are left unclear. Instead, the passage focuses on the event surrounding her, her husband’s death. While atypical, this choice is highly symbolic, demonstrating how Mrs. Mallard’s life revolves around her husband — even in death. Correspondingly, it draws attention to the lack of identity of 19th century women, who serve moreso as extensions of their husbands than people in their own right. The protagonist’s bland personality is further highlighted by her stereotypical reaction to her husband’s death, as she devolves into a “storm of grief” (Chopin 3).
Although there is no clear statement that shows Louise to have an oppressive marriage, there are ambiguous statements about the marriage that show she feels caged. During the event of finding out about Brently’s death, Louise did not respond “as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden wild abandonment” (Chopin), due to Brently’s death she is finally able to let out emotions that she has held in for so many years of being a dutiful wife. Once Louise is left alone to grieve she reflects upon her feelings and her marriage. The narrator points out that Louise knows she will cry again for him when she sees his funeral, remembering his “kind, tender hands...the face that had never looked save with love upon her” (Chopin).