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Essay Comparing Story Of An Hour And The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson were both written by women to express how they were treated in their time period. Both of these stories were criticized because they challenged the belief that a woman should not be just a docile wife. These two pieces of literature utilized symbolic imagery, repetition, and dramatic irony to convey the common theme shared that women are opressed by the standards of society. In Chopin's Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard sees the outside world through the only window in her room. It is described in detail, being a "delicious breath of rain". This imagery symbolizes her tears; her grief is the rain from the sky, but as it falls it brings "a breath of new spring …show more content…

The dramatic irony in that Mrs. Mallard died at the end is that is the only way she truly could be free. Even if her husband had actually died, she would still be confined by the rules of society and the expectations placed on her to mourn for the rest of her life. Society told her that she should act a certain way so even though she thought her life was her own, it was still dictated by the society she lived in. The Yellow Wallpaper was written with much more symbolism, but it still conveys a similar message to The Story of an Hour. The wallpaper is described many times throughout the story, presented almost exclusively as being very ugly, "repellent, almost revolting". It's yellow color symbolizes the way the narrator feels about her situation. "Unclean", "dull", "sickly" is how she may have felt deep down about her relationship with her husband and the life she lived under him. The wallpaper itself becomes a symbol for her. She uses it as a coping method and projects her feelings onto it and the woman she sees in it. The windows symbolize how she is trapped in this marriage and she can only view the beautiful outside through the many windows, reminding her of what she cannot have. Even though her husband reminds her of the

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