“I am outcast” Melinda mentally doesn’t want to speak so she can avoid all emotional confrontation Pg.28 “My throat squeezes shut”. Melinda’s silence slowly erodes her self esteem and leads to depressive behaviors. In the novel Speak the author uses the protagonist Melinda, to teach the reader the importance of verbal expression.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a woman’s struggle to be heard in a society working against her. The narrator has been diagnosed with “nervous depression” (648), and her physician husband decides to take her to a mansion to help her recover; her recovery also involves not participating in any activity that might stimulate her mind, like writing. The narrator describes the house as having “hedges and walls and gates that lock” (648), and the room she has to stay in has bars on the windows, almost like a prison. The narrator also points out the hideous wallpaper, and makes many references to it throughout the story.
As being a doctor he thinks that whatever he is doing to his wife is for her own good. It is clear that he has good intentions for his wife, but the writer is telling her readers that attitudes of the men toward women that were established in their minds by their society. Until the women’s movement the men didn’t even know that their behavior was considered cruel. John just wanted his wife to get out of the depression by locking her away, and if you look at the story at the end she did came out of her depression because she lost the touch of reality and in her mind she was trying to save another woman from the yellow wallpaper. She forgot her own depression because she went insane.
The townspeople never consider her to be a crazy woman, not even when she claimed her father wasn't dead, and kept the body in her house. They all make up excuses for Emily because they felt sympathy for her, and they kept on just saying poor Emily. The narrator in The Cathedral did not want anything to do with Robert because he was a blind man. He thought they would not have anything to bond over anything, and all he knew about him was what his wife told him. The narrator assumes he has a long cane, dark sunglasses, and is a quiet man whom he would
Why do both women let their husband tell them what to do, no matter what negative effects will be a product of the decision that their husband made? A big part of their submissiveness has to do with gender roles during the time that the stories were written. All women before the late 20th century were expected to be submissive to their husband no matter what. They were asked to do things with their husband’s best interest in mind. The tasks the husbands asked of the women can be compared to that of slavery.
She kept her secret so long that she now views it as a second nature to be quiet. Resentment and hate are two very strong words usually not used to describe friends. Her relationship with Heather turns sour when Heather decides that the depressed girl with a bad reputation cannot be her friend. Melinda cannot even start over with new friends. Without coming clean and freeing her “reputation” she is unable to change.
John believes that his wife needs to get better from a nervous condition, so he takes her out to a country house to recover. He is often condescending to her and her needs, and whenever he does talk to her it is usually about his own problems. Furthermore, he does not permit her to do anything that involves work or creativity not even to write. The narrator writes in a secret diary as to provide any form of freedom and creativity that she desires as a human. John eventually finds the diary and destroys it, and John confines the narrator to a room with a yellow wallpaper that the narrator despises.
In this story the narrator moves to a summer home with her husband, who is also her doctor, and her child, who she is not allowed to see. According to her husband in order for her to get well she can not do anything, including working and writing, but she still continues to write in secret which
Berry, in the Feminism, the Body, and the Machine, makes an argument about what he believes the feminist, who are against his paper about not needing a computer, are missing when they discuss marriage: “marriage as a state of mutual help, and the household as an economy.” I agree. In his article about the computer, Berry mentioned that his wife helped him to type up his ideas and gave him feedback, which frustrates feminist because they find this act to be exploitation without knowing all the details. Within all of their complaints, Berry noticed that all the feminists were frustrated that his wife was not being exploited, was not allowed to find her own employment outside of the home, and was being subservient to him.
Edna wants to find freedom because she feels trapped in her life. Edna Pontellier wants to know what it is like to live outside of being a wife and a mother. Edna tasted a little bit of freedom from her children whenever they went to Iberville. To gain freedom from her husband, she refuses to have sexual relations with him, and she abruptly stopped her Tuesday obligations of meeting people at the house which made him furious. Edna wants to rent her own place instead of living at home.
She was like a child and John was her strict father, he wouldn 't let her do anything besides eat and sleep. Since the beginning of the short story the narrator has been treated as if she were one of John 's patients instead of his wife. For instance, when she wanted John to change the wallpaper he told her she was "letting it get the better of her" and "that
Her situation is more like prison-like, when the narrator asked her husband to repair the walls, he refuses. “That after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on”. Even though this environment made her feel repressed, her husband denied to change the walls, making her a prisoner in his house. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!”. The paper represent a mental prison constraining her like gates or bars.
Lastly, In the story her husband never lets her talk about house she feels, so she keeps it all bottled up in her head which eventually drives her crazy. As “The Yellow Wallpaper” States “It 's hard to talk to john about my case, because he loves me so. But I tried to last night” (777 Gilman). This show another great example of women cruelty because back then women were not allowed to state there own opinion and also
There is a quote that constantly surfaces around throughout the story “What is one to do.” This is said by a woman who is completely powerless to the male population, so she has no choice but to stay. Flannery O’Connor connects this story to the time she went through a mental breakdown and was sent away. Her husband sent her to a man named Weir Mitchel; he was the man that tends to these types of cases. To men, this seemed to be something that wasn’t real.
Also, the main character expresses selfishness even though she love him she is thinking about her being free and she does not have a problem with her husband it might just be with the institution of marriage where she feels like she is incarcerated. Whereas, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also imprisoned but this case more literal than the other, it shows a controlling male figure that controls his wives every move and even right to go outside even when she is supposed to be on “vacation” but she was not allowed to do much and had to keep her writing a secret. “ And I am alone a good deal just now... I lie here on this great immovable bed-it is nailed down.” (81).