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A Rose For Emily And The Yellow Wall-Paper

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The topic that I have decided to explore for my Research Paper speaks about comparing the main character’s social issues in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” to Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper”. What initially drew my attention towards these stories and topic were the ways these women were treated in their society. While reading these stories, I empathized with each main character’s struggle of being judged and controlled by the people in their society. Throughout these stories, the main characters are expected to act a certain way and are forced into social isolation. In Faulkner’s story, Emily remains single until her 30’s and becomes subject to judgment when she eventually finds a partner. In Gilman’s story, the narrator is prohibited from doing any kind of activity and is forced to deal with her issues by herself. Thomas Dilworth speaks about the town’s southern values and how they affected Emily Grierson’s actions in “A Rose for Emily”. Dilworth explains that the town disapproved Emily’s love affair with Homer Barron because of her social status. In the end, Dilworth believes that …show more content…

Quawas argues that the narrator is aware of her place in society and struggles to free herself from the social norms of the era. Throughout the article, Quawas believes that the narrator’s insanity resulted from the era’s social norms and works as an act of rebellion against them. The narrator’s thoughts about how her husband, John, treats her are shown throughout the story. Quawas argument gives meaning to the narrator’s reactions to John’s actions. John’s actions were typical of a doctor in that era and the narrator seemed to disagree with them. At first, the narrator seemed to comply with her husband’s demands but as she begins to reach insanity, her actions become more rebellious against these social

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In “A Rose for Emily,” the author, Faulkner, describes the life of a women after the death of her family and the abandonment of her friends. The story is about a female named Emily whose father dies of natural causes, and she is left with little money except for her house and an African American manservant. The manservant is a very loyal person who stays by Emily’s side till her own death. This story is depicted from the neighbor’s point about the lady Emily. It recounts her life as she lived it from an external perspective.

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At the end of the movie, “The Great Gatsby,” Gatsby asks, “What is better, to live as a monster or die as a good man?” That is a tough question, especially for a female in the 19th country. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts the miserable life of females under the power of chauvinism. The narrator and her husband, John, rent a beautiful house faraway from the city. The narrator suffers from what her husband believes is “temporary nervous depression.”

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Not only that, as Homer becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, it scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. Even though Emily is from the high class family, it does not mean that she is living up to the pleasant lifestyle. As a matter of fact, she is actually living a gloomy and desolate life, which is essentially the opposite lifestyle expected for Emily's rank in society by the townspeople. Although Emily once represented a great southern tradition centering on the landed gentry with their vast holdings and considerable resources, Emily's legacy has devolved, making her more a duty and an obligation than a romanticized vestige of a dying order.

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Throughout the story, the main character, Miss Emily Grierson, shows signs of what appears to be some form of mental illness. Although Faulkner never states that Miss Emily has anything wrong with her mental health, he does provide enough evidence to support that she is not psychologically stable. In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner portrays the main character as a mysterious icon of the small town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the story states, Emily’s father is an admirable figure in the city of Jefferson. After his passing, the townspeople show the same respect for Emily, as well.

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Susan S. Lanser’s “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the politics of color in America” examines the impacts “The Yellow Wallpaper” had on feminist writing styles and critiques. Lanser writes that the story helps to analyze the reading trough “the lens of a female consciousness” and apply the knowledge gained from a female perspective onto other literature (418). The transition that the narrator displays from being dependent on John to becoming independent reflects the feminist movement and challenges the “male dominance” that currently takes precedence in society (418). The “patriarchal prisonhouse” that is society controls the narrator and oppresses women not only in “The Yellow Wallpaper” but in real life as well (419). The

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In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson, a prominent member of her small town, dies alone in her home. Upon her death, curious townsfolk entered her home trying to learn her secrets. It was thought she was crazy. Emily Grierson was not crazy; she was isolated by her father, which led to her odd social tendencies and unique interactions with others. A Rose for Emily is a short story based in a small town.

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As in most of his works one of the overbearing ideals of A Rose For Emily is a sense of class and of elegance that was as evident as the sky in the South. The main character of the story, Miss Emily Grierson, is William’s way of exemplifying this bygone way of life in a more modern era; and both Nicole and I agree that this is the main plot in the story. Throughout A Rose For Emily the idea of monuments and age are extremely prevalent as both Miss Emily and her homestead are commonly referred to as, “relic.”

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Being a woman in the early twentieth century, she simply followed what her husband told her. She did not have her own voice and kept her thoughts to herself. With that being said, it is as if her identity is simply that of the average woman during her time. However, the days she spends in confinement go by, the identity of that woman drifts away and she is overtaken by the identity of her own mental illness. As said in Diana Martin’s journal on “Images in Psychiatry”, while the narrator in isolation she becomes “increasingly despondent and nervous”.

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Faulkner describes black people by a derogatory term “negro” to emphasize the main issue of the southern mentality. However, author pays the equal attention to gender inequality. Starting from the very beginning Faulkner describes Emily’s unquestionable obedience towards the constraints that her father put on her life. Emily is the symbol of old American south, yet her character has a lot in common with women of younger generation “Only a man of Colonel Satoris’s generation could have invented it and only a women could have believed it” (Faulkner), it is not women’s competence to think by themselves; the statement that Faulkner wants make in this part is that men are superior gender.

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This can be seen from her perception and description of the man who shares her “special” seat as a “… fine old man” and the woman as “a big old woman” (101). Her Surname 2 remembrance of the previous Sunday’s patient Englishman and his nagging hard to please wife whom she wanted to shake also shows her envy for women with male companionship. In Faulkner’s story A Rose for Emily, Emily is seen as a person who suffers from isolation from her community, by tradition and by law. Her isolation from the community and love is what seems to perturb her most; she is unable to accept the idea that her father is dead and she remains in denial.

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Which in this book you see an excellent portrayal of the acts of segregation and discrimination going on around this time. The author showed the struggles of Lily with an abusive father, but at the same time kept her white privilege protected. While her housekeeper, Rosaleen, a strong bold woman keeping herself in tact throughout the obstacles of oppression she faced as a black woman in this time of history, was a representation of what blacks across the country dealt with day by day. A good example of oppression now vs. then is

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