Dehumanization In The Yellow Wallpaper And Franz Kafka's The Metamo

Hegemonic notions and dehumanization are underlying themes in Charlotte Gilman’s piece The Yellow Wallpaper along with Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Each story has an eerie air and depressing story depicting individuals being stripped of their identities by those above them. Within each piece the author lays out a storyline of the characters before and after abjection and how they cope with these changes. Although these to works are from different time periods and written in different styles hegemonic notions and dehumanization are both driving forces behind the main characters neurosis. First and foremost, lets analyze the definition of hegemony which we will see in both texts we are analyzing. To begin let’s look at a definition of

In each text there is someone viewed as the authority figure who decides the hegemony that will be followed. The main character in The Metamorphosis is subjected to the hegemonic notion that he is there to provide for his family first and foremost. They rely on him to keep the family afloat financially, therefore even though he can’t stand his job it must be his life in order to fulfil his parent’s expectations. While lying in bed he thought, “If I didn’t have to hold back for my parent’s sake, I’d have marched right up to him, and given him a piece of my mind. He’d have fallen right off his desk” (Kafka). In the quote above Gregor addresses that his family is the only reason that he works for a man that he does not enjoy, yet no matter how miserable he is he has to keep his feelings bottled up and work. In The Yellow Wallpaper the hegemonic notion was that “guys know best” since men knew best you didn’t have an appose their orders. In this case the doctor in the story is also the women’s husband. He believes that that best way to cure her “nervous condition” is to keep her secluded and have absolutely no activity with the outside world or herself. She on the other hand does not think this is the best way to approach her illness she writes, “And what can one do?If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures

Boy is that a terrible turn of events! Sadly,0in each work the character is subjected to a hard journey in which the world as they know it is stripped from them. In that moment they faced abjection. They begin to see the world in a different light it was no longer what they planned or as easy as they intended. In The Metamorphosis this took place when he woke up as a bug, causing him to not be able to get up and go to work. Kafka writes, “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect.” This is the moment his world turned upside down, he could no longer partake in the life he once knew. The Women from The Yellow Wallpaper also faced such abjection when she is not able to be with her child. She writes, “it is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (Gilman 2). What was causing her depression was unknown during that time so they only way they knew to treat it was to take the child away. In her case she was not able to be with her child, but she was also put in to confinement to rest as a treatment. In both instances the life they knew was quickly changing and there was nothing they could do except accept it. Not long after the abjection occurred they went in to seclusion where