The Yellow Wallpaper And A Sorrowful Women

In the 19th century the roles of women were very different than they are today. Women had few rights and their only purpose was to maintain the household while men worked all day. Men of this generation made family decisions and their wife’s own personal decisions. We have seen textual evidence of the life of women in the nineteenth century, thanks to Charlotte Gilman and Susan Glaspell. Only a century later have women received more equality and less responsibility. After “The Yellow wallpaper” and “Trifles” was written, the dominant roles of the husband and wife had decreased to a minimum. The three women from the short stories “Trifles”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and “A Sorrowful Woman” all have some sort of mental illness. Their illness has taken control of their decision making. This is shown when Mrs. Hale kills her husband, John’s wife rips off the wallpaper from her bedroom, and the sorrowful woman disconnects herself from her family and responsibilities.

Whether it was too much dominance like in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Trifles” or not enough, like in “A Sorrowful Woman”. It was too hard on the women which caused them to react harshly. The husband 's method of overly controlling their sick wives doesn’t work because treating women like property doesn’t make them feel good. As well as the method of letting the sick woman treat her own sickness based her feelings, because she will feel like she has too much responsibility, and this stress would eventually overcome her. All of these problems could have been avoided if the relationship supremacy was equal. This way the couples would at least be in control themselves, but when needed their spouse could step in and act as a referee in a crisis situation. If there is a middle ground for the amount of dominance each spouse should have, then things might have not ended so fatally in these three