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Comparing The Yellow Wallpaper And The Unicorn In The Garden

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Are “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Unicorn in the Garden” short stories about women’s oppression and feminist works? The evidence is clear: both works of literature have deeper meanings behind women’s oppression by men. Both stories contain women that have gone mad thanks to the situations that their men have put them in. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Unicorn in the Garden” both demonstrate that women can become insane when acted upon by an outside force such as that of man’s oppression. “The Unicorn in the Garden” is a story in that a woman is being oppressed by her husband. The man wants the woman gone. To do this he uses the story of a unicorn being outside in the garden. He makes up this story because he knew if he told his wife enough times she would believe him. This is seen in many …show more content…

He did this because he wanted to be alone and have her took away (“The Unicorn in the Garden”). “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses symbolism to show how oppression can slowly affect the way one thinks and ultimately lives. The women beings by saying about the wallpaper: “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning su night. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (“The Yellow Wallpaper”). This could symbolize that this is how she feels about her life. She feels that her life is repellent, unclean, and dull. She feels this way because of her husband John. He told her she was sick, he told her she needed to go away to rest, and he kept her locked up in this room. These things made her actually believe that she was crazy and needed to stay in this room. If he had not made her do these things, she would have continued on with life and been fine physically and mentally. According to “Theses on the Feminist Novel,” “Feminism concerns the equality of women. When I say equality, I mean that women should be able to move through the world with the same ease as men.” John did

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1299 Words | 6 Pages

In the Yellow Wallpaper, the Woman does not have this bond, and instead sinks further into her own nightmarish fantasy. As a child, the woman had an active imagination as she writes, “I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store” (Gilman 135). In her isolation, she is unable to do almost anything, and the only thing she can do entertain herself with her imagination. Her isolation causes her to see women in the wallpaper as she writes, “ The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!”(143).

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1166 Words | 5 Pages

“Trifles” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are early 20th century short stories that depict women’s suppressive role in society and the belief that women should be treated as subservient and substandard to men. Authors Susan Glaspell (“Trifles”) and Charlotte Anna Gilman (“The Yellow Wallpaper”) are both known for advocating feminism in their works of literature. “Trifles” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” exploit patriarchal dominance and its effect on suppressing women’s intellectual and societal equality. In each short story, the woman protagonist is depicted as trapped in her marriage.

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431 Words | 2 Pages

Although this book was intended to portray a feminist lens, there is still a lot of patriacary shown throughout the story. In the novel men have emotional control over the women, leaving them in a submissive trance towards men. Feminism is defined as ¨the advocacy of womenś rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.¨ This novel does not provide much equality between the sexes.

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894 Words | 4 Pages

"The Story of an Hour ' ' by Kate Chopin and "The Yellow Wallpaper ' ' by Charlottle Perkins Gilman are short stories about women in the late 1800 's. In "The Story of an Hour" the woman is living in the city, her husband has gone off to work, she has a heart condition, and she has believed he was dead. The husband appears and she dies because her chance at freedom is lost. While "The Yellow Wallpaper" is in a country house on vacation. She is forced to play sick and is told she must rest by her husband and doctor. As a result she moves into madness believing the wallpaper has come alive.

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1048 Words | 5 Pages

Men treated women as second class citizens in society during the early 1900s. Even with the oppression of women in society in this time, many women have struggled to expand their roles, and acquire additional rights. From my perspective, the authors of these stories are indirectly trying to tell us how much oppression the women have been through during the time. “The Thing on the Doorstep” is a short story about a woman, Asenath, who is not in control of herself because her father, Ephraim, possesses her body after he is deceased. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who suffers from mental illness.

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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 narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

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570 Words | 3 Pages

In her society, it is the woman that is left to be alone in her own thoughts, shown through her husband’s freedom to leave the house and not come back until he wants to versus her confinement to the house. This is reflected through the various “hedges and walls and gates that lock”, making her stay isolated in the house. Ultimately, the character is overtaken by the imagination and through the

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618 Words | 3 Pages

Fall-related fracture is the common phenomenon in older adults resulting in chronic pain, loss of function, and disability. Evidently, it is the highest cause of accidental death in older adults. Noteworthy, the frequency of falls increases with age and frailty levels. Moreover, frail older adults, with a history of falling, are significantly at risk of adverse health outcomes including increased hospital stays and death. The causation of fall in frail older adults are intricate and interfere with the interrelationship between individual and environment context.

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802 Words | 4 Pages

It 's here where she discovers the yellow wallpaper that leads to her mental demise. What is the symbolic meaning of the yellow wallpaper and how do her interactions with the wallpaper represent the change in her feelings towards her husband and society. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes women 's suffrage and the struggles women went through, and her interactions with the wallpaper represent the problems woman had with their husbands and society. The main symbolism present in the story is how the yellow wallpaper represents woman suffrage and the problems they endured during the 19th century.

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1291 Words | 6 Pages

The "windows are barred" (648), and the unmovable bed "that is nailed down" add to her feeling of imprisonment. (650). Thirdly, the narrator suffers from oppression.

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562 Words | 3 Pages

(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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584 Words | 3 Pages

At first it is seen as nothing but an old ruined wallpaper with a “bad” pattern. As the story progresses she stares at the paper for hours and sees a sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. She hen sees a desperate woman trying to leave the wallpaper which shows how the women feel trapped. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of the oppressive life that many women have today and back then.

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1091 Words | 5 Pages

She identified the yellow wallpaper as a metaphor for women’s discourse. The narrator’s underlying feelings of confusion, depression, and frustration was covered by the yellow wallpaper which she rips from the walls at the very end to reveal “what is elsewhere kept hidden and embodies patterns that the patriarchal order ignores, suppresses, fears as grotesque or fails to perceive at all” (35). The yellow wallpaper is interpreted as the conflict of gender inequality and the struggles of women in a patriarchal society. The imagery reflects on how women feel toward sexual inequality and the situation with

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810 Words | 4 Pages

The yellow wallpaper is not just the dreadful décor the narrator is stuck within the story but the most important symbol in the story. It symbolizes how women were not allowed to change or free to make their own decisions. The narrator once said that the wallpaper "sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (Gilman). She felt like the wallpaper stuck and not able to succumb to change she demonstrates this as well when she says "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (Gilman). The narrator herself became the women she saw in the wallpaper that she felt trapped in a life without change which manifested itself into the wallpaper further increasing the symbolism and importance of yellow wallpaper.

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