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Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper And The Birthmark

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Yellow Wallpapers and Crimson Hands: Feminist Critical Approach on “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Birthmark”
The feminist critical approach is very commonly used to critique both modern and outdated literature, to emphasize the oppression of, and prejudiced societal standards of women. Taking a feminist critical approach, the stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, provides underlying areas of similarities with the societal role and expectations of women being portrayed. Both stories display the conventional role imposed on women of being the less dominant spouse. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John takes control over his wife, portraying the subordination of women in marital relationships. …show more content…

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the subordination of women is portrayed through the main character, Jane. She is shown to be quite docile in comparison to her husband, John: “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 4). John is displayed as a very dominant male and prefers to have control in every situation, so when he finds that Jane is writes about her feelings, he senses a loss of control and disapproves of Jane doing so. Another example of Jane being a subordinate spouse is after she tells him about her sickness, and he responds with a laugh, treating her as an inferior: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (Gilman 1). Jane proves herself to be very submissive, by brushing aside his dominance, saying that it typical behaviour in a marriage and accepting his dominance over her . In “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne the main character, Georgiana, also lives up to the female stereotype by being submissive and obedient to her husband. Aylmer, Georgiana's husband believes that his wife is not perfect, due to the small defect that is upon her face, but being a scientist he assures that he can try to remove the imperfection. Georgiana portrays her female stereotypes by being submissive and allowing her husband to remove the mark: “I know not what may be the cost to …show more content…

Jane in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is suffering from nervous depression and Georgiana in “The Birthmark” suffers from a fatal birthmark that looks like a crimson hand. In the “Yellow Wallpaper” Jane's husband tells her that the treatment to her nervous depression is to do nothing active and stay in a room all day. “I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day” (Gilman 3). As a doctor Jane’s husband gives her appropriate treatments by supplying her with prescriptions and telling her to rest in her room. She abhors the wallpaper that is in the room she is forced to stay in the wallpaper symbolizes her mental degeneration as a result of the captivity ensued on her by her husband. Over time she begins to see hallucination of people trapped in the walls. “The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off - the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.” (Gilman 3). The wallpaper in her room leads to her madness throughout the story and instead of curing her, this makes her symptom of nervous depression even worse than it already is. The story portrays that the female character has very unstable mental health, implying that females are weaker than men emotionally.

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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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