Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Story Of An Hour

During the 19th and 20th centuries, women can’t feel complete, whole, well-respected, and appreciated due to society’s influences. In several works deal with the issue of self-fulfillment for women, readers can see that women couldn’t reach their full potential and couldn’t satisfy their own desires due to pressures from society. Women were solely controlled by the society crafted by men and expected to act as a feminine ideal of that period.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a woman was slowly degenerated to insanity because of the isolation that the woman’s husband kept her in. The woman is forbidden from doing anything intellectual even though she believes that “excitement and change” would do her good (Gilman 768). The

In Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour,” the main character Louise dies of a heart attack after seeing her husband is alive. At first, Louise gets to know that her husband died in a train accident. Louise is sad to hear the news, however, she finally feels like she escaped the oppression of marriage. Alone in her room, she keeps reciting, “free, free, free” as she looks out the window (Chopin 784). Louise finally could “live for herself” and she finally is fulfilled because there would be no oppression from society and from her husband (Chopin 785). Louise thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if they do it out of kindness. Louise’s sudden self-discovery, first greeted with fear and then joyful acceptance, reflects the female search for identity in a male-dominated world. She feels ecstatic with her newfound sense of independence. At the end, Louise’s husband unexpectedly shows up. Louise dies because of a heart attack after seeing her husband is well. The doctors say that Louise had died because “of joy that kills” after seeing her husband (Chopin 785). It is ironic because Louise didn’t die because of happiness. She died because she is somber that she is not free. It’s like the oppression she feels from her husband and society is the bars that kept Louise from freedom, and it opened for a moment, yet it suddenly shuts down and traps