How The Yellow Wallpaper Reflects The Perception Of Entrapment

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a short story about a narrator, Jane, known as the wife, who suffers from post-natal depression and is isolated from the rest of society, which causes her to feel trapped. Published in 1982, it portrays the author’s personal experience of depression, including a traumatic experience with the rest cure. She created this short story to inform readers about depression by illustrating the feeling of entrapment, which left the narrator to lose her sanity. While the author portrays the perception of entrapment, John Steinbeck’s, “The Chrysanthemums” paints a similar picture. This story is about a woman named Elisa Allen who feels discontent with her current lifestyle. Throughout the story, she

With little details about the events that take place, she slowly spirals out of control due to the little knowledge of what happens in the outside world because of her isolation. Elisa is known to be an optimistic, ambitious, and a thriving person, which also describes the chrysanthemum. However, all of those characteristics are thrown to the curb such as when the tinker tosses Elisa’s chrysanthemums when offered. “Elisa’s desires (for instance, to be independent and free) are deemed socially inappropriate” (Bloom, 82). Since Elisa feels that the chrysanthemum and herself are the same, she is also tossed to the side, which “mimics the way society has rejected women s nothing more than mothers and housekeepers” (Ayuningrum, 6). The fact that men carelessly throw women to the side as if it was nothing shows the oppression of women during the time-period. Instead of confronting the tinker about his cruel action, Elisa hides behind her husband’s back to avoid any conflict. The coward-ness of Elisa portrays the lack of equality and as well as showing signs of vulnerability in a woman. Overall, from the barred windows and gates that lock, to the isolation of living in the valley, both men from each story uses at least one type of restraint on the two women, which allows them to spiral out of

The fog that covered the valley represented the limitation of women’s power and voice. Although Steinbeck created the story when women’s rights were allowed, they were still treated unequally. In “The Chrysanthemums”, Elisa had multiple opportunities to stand up for herself against the tinker, but was not able to execute it successfully. This restraint in her life, made her become a coward and eventually spiral out of control due to the lack of self-expression. Although Elisa’s setting was located on an open farm, she was confined to only her garden and home. In contrast to the tinker, he was allowed to travel and roam wherever he wishes without being scolded. The two characters clash together, therefore jealousy rises and Elisa slowly loses control but her garden of chrysanthemums keeps her