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Compare And Contrast The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour

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Comparison Essay Draft
Lisa Reyes, SN
Galen College of Nursing Comparison Essay Draft
"The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Story of an Hour,” written by Kate Chopin, are very similar, being that both women in the two short stories feel trapped by their husbands, along with a feeling of helplessness. Both women long for the day they can feel freedom, if that day were to ever come. In a time when women are expected to be submissive to their husband and tend to household duties, these two women yearned to break free from their enslaved life. They not only have to deal with the institution of marriage, but also the medical issues they each had to endure. This essay will compare the themes of oppression, …show more content…

In, “The Story of an Hour, “Mrs. Mallard is over come with joy at the thought of living the rest of her days for herself and herself alone” (Chopin, p15). Knowing that each day from that point on would be spend by herself, and with no one else unless she allowed that person in. She seems to be excited to start this new life as an individual being, with no one other than herself in complete control of her life. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” longs for that same sort of freedom. Throughout the story, she stares at this horrific looking yellow wallpaper in the room she feels imprisoned in. She believes that there is a woman is trapped behind the paper that stares back at her, reaching out to her as if there is something to be said. The woman behind the paper symbolizes narrator and her way of expressing her feelings of entrapment. The woman in the wallpaper is trying to break free from the walls. When the narrator finally reaches her breaking point she yells out, "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" She believes that it was herself who was trapped in the wall paper the whole

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At this point she begins to tear down the wallpaper as fast as she can. Then the protagonist says, “And I 've pulled off most of the paper, so you can 't put me back!”(Perkins, 2013) Meaning since she pulled off all of the wallpaper the girl in it has escaped. Since the girl is her she has escaped and now she is free and will not return

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1002 Words | 5 Pages

The woman in the wallpaper is trapped just like she is. The narrator creates a figure that she could relate to and then spends all her time focused on the figure and trying to figure out how to help the woman in the wallpaper escape her cell. As the story continues and she remains isolated, it is obvious Jane views herself as the woman inside the wallpaper. As a result of being trapped in her room, she begins to lose her sanity. She believes she is trapped in the wallpaper and must escape its holds.

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626 Words | 3 Pages

In the two stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The story of an Hour”, the reader is presented with two very similar ideas concerning women’s rights and feminism. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author is showing a support for a woman’s right to act and speak on her own behalf. The alternative to this clearly leads to insanity, as it does with Jane, in the story. In comparison the short story, “The Story of an Hour”, written in 1894 by Kate Chopin, is written to show how much things have changed for women. Instead of being oppressed women are now liberated!

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1024 Words | 5 Pages

She becomes obsessive over the woman in the wallpaper, theorizing that the wallpaper moves because of the woman, and assumes that the woman can escape from the wallpaper. At the end of the story, the narrator locks herself in her room and throws the key to ensure that she will catch the woman in the wallpaper. When her husband John unlocks the

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1226 Words | 5 Pages

Going back in time to the 1890s, the way society acted was way different than it is now. The two stories, “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” by Charlotte Stetson, were both written in that period and show the differences in the way people lived. The point of view in “The Story of an Hour” was written in the third person while “The Yellow Wall Paper” was written in the first person. Even though The Story of an Hour isn’t narrated by Mrs. Mallard, it still mainly follows the journey of her life and not telling the readers every detail, helped heighten that shock factor at the end of the story when her husband came through the door alive. Yellow Wall-Paper may be in first person, but it is similar to Mrs. Mallard's

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894 Words | 4 Pages

Then after this she kinda just went beyond crazy. “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And i’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can 't put me back.” She wanted the woman in the yellow wallpaper to escape so she helped her out. Because her husband traumatized her she was always nervous and emotional.

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611 Words | 3 Pages

This observation also serves as the narrator recognizing the paper’s, or boundary’s, relevance to herself; she sees a “woman”--a reflection of herself--trapped behind the paper, confined by that thin line that separates herself from total insanity. Her behavior becomes obsessive: she keeps a constant vigil of the wallpaper at night, and claims that the woman behind the wallpaper “is all the time trying to climb through” (348). And the narrator aids her escape--as soon as she is given the opportunity: “I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (349). The destruction of the wallpaper is symbolic of her fully delving into the world of insanity. From this point

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798 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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1096 Words | 5 Pages

“The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 652). The narrator can see a person, the person can be representing herself. She feels trapped and may be losing her mind. She can see woman trapped behind the wall and not be able to escape from it. The narrator describes it in detail that it seems like she is talking about herself going through all this emotionally and physically.

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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959 Words | 4 Pages

The narrator writes “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (Gilman). As the author of The Blume Blog points out, “she does not seem to waiver at all in thinking that the ‘thing’ behind the wallpaper is specifically a woman,” indicating that the narrator is, perhaps unconsciously, starting to recognize herself in the woman behind the bars of the wallpaper. It’s no longer just in the wallpaper that the narrator sees this other woman either. She sees her in the garden “on that long road under the trees, creeping along” and hiding “under the blackberry vines” (Gilman). The narrator even starts to act as the woman in the wallpaper does by ‘creeping’ around the room, and the hallucinations of seeing this woman outside suggests the narrator’s own desire to escape and “be free of the reformatory she has been living in” (The Blume).

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1008 Words | 5 Pages

However, we later see a shift in her feelings towards the wallpaper as she states that she is growing “really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper” and comes to a realization that it may be “because of the wallpaper” (Par 94) As her opinions on the wallpaper begin to change, the progression of her mental instability becomes increasing visible. She begins to build a relationship with the wallpaper and claims that “There are things in that paper that nobody knows about” (Par 22) her. As this relationship with the wallpaper builds, her sanity begins to slip, and the hallucinations begin in a somewhat minor manor. In her first mention of “the woman” she says that the pattern on the

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1155 Words | 5 Pages

Nevertheless, on a night that John was not home, the narrator and the woman in the wall struggled all night and morning to get her out but were unsuccessful. After hours of trying, the narrator became desperate, desperate enough to “come out of that wall-paper” herself and confront man while urging other women to do the same (Perkins Gilman, 58). The story ends with John fainting right across the narrator’s path of the wall after she says “I’ve got out at last...you can’t put me back” demonstrating that she has challenged the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and conquered promoting the equality of sexes

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501 Words | 3 Pages

By the end of the story the narrator was incredibly disassociated and has convinced herself that she freed herself from the wallpaper by tearing it off of the wall and that she shall be able to creep around the house no matter what John and Jennie try to do to "put her back in the wallpaper". She believes she has won her freedom, when she has only imprisoned herself inside of her own

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658 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator convinces herself that there is a woman trapped in the paper who is trying to get out (Perkins 385). She also claims that the woman behind the paper shakes it in hopes to escape (Perkins 388). The narrator becomes obsessed with the ghostly woman, who is in the paper, and convinces herself that she too was once trapped in the paper and escaped. The narrator is determined to catch the creeping woman. She believes that there are others who are trapped in the wallpaper by night and are free during the day.

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