Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper And A Jury Of Her Peers

Madness in Bloom The majority of humanity sees madness as unreasonable. They think of madness as negative trait, but in the stories they are positive. In the short stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, both of the main characters fall into a spell of madness; they are influenced by both physical and mental abuse where their conditions are perceived as reasonable based off of the treatment of the people around them, their environment, and their mental thinking processes. The main characters’ fall into madness is reasonable considering the treatment of the people around them. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist faces the fragile treatment of her peers. Her husband, his

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” A hideous room becomes the main character’s whole world. Not being able to go outside and not having anything to do caused her to focus on the patterns on the wallpaper. The bars on the window also had a huge effect on her as well. The bars reinforced her containment, and when the moon just to the window, she can see her shadow trapped inside the bars on the wallpaper. In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Minnie is trapped inside of her house with the heartless beast. Her house is quite dull, messy, and almost out of reach from the outside world. According to Mrs. Hale, Minnie’s house was “...down in a hollow down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. I don’t know what it is, but it's a lonesome place, and always was,” (Glaspell 156). Her house reflects how secluded and uneventful her life was. No one came to visit her. She branches out in search for joy and buys a pet canary which accompanied her in such a tough time. The birdcage after the bird’s murder tortures Minnie. The canary brought her so much joy before it all ended. She loves the bird so much “she was going to bury it in that pretty little box,” (Glaspell 156). With the canary gone, her reality is always shown to her by the broken cage and the absence of a

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the main characters thinking processes focus on her general state in the beginning and then it completely consists of the awful, yellow wallpaper. When she sees herself in the window, she sees another woman. She starts to dedicate her time to free the woman. Closer to the end, the main character thinks the other residents are against her when they were only trying to help. Specifically, the main character assumes that her husband’s sister wants to free the woman herself. This makes her very angry, causing her to speed up the process of losing her sanity. The death of the bird in “A Jury of Her Peers” gives Minnie the mind of a killer. Because of the way John killed the bird, she knows how his death will happen. Her mindset can easily be seen in her quilting and in her household. Quite distracted, she failed to keep a tidy house. Her thoughts bother her as she lives her daily life in the unsettling house. At the same time, thought of her cheerful past haunt her. The loss of her bird-like, cheerful personality and the loss of her canary led to her murder her