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Haunting Feminist Theory Essay

429 Words2 Pages

Alejandra Metcalf
Mrs. Cottom
ENGL1010
03 November, 2017
The Haunting Feminist Theory By dictionary definition, feminism is the advocacy of women 's rights based on the equality of the sexes. Throughout the years, society has had three ¨phases¨ of feminism, and the definition of feminism has changed through those phases. Currently, feminism is a debateable word on whether the term is good or bad. Despite the controversy and debate over feminism, the theory of feminism in literature cannot be ignored, even by the most misogynistic of people. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's ¨The Yellow Wallpaper¨, Roddy Dowell´s ¨The Pram¨, and Kate Chopin 's ¨The Story of an Hour,¨ can all be viewed with the application of the feminist theory. Throughout all three stories, the main character, who is a biological female in every story, faces struggles that are realistic for women in the real world. From the oppression that the characters in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour” face with being married to men that use their illnesses as excuses to keep them down, to the way that another women kept the narrator in “The Pram” in …show more content…

Women have suffered oppression since the dawn of time, and still suffer oppression to date in various regions of the world. In “The Story of an Hour,” the main character suffers the typical oppression for women of that era by needing men to take care of her because she was ill. She is so oppressed that when she hears that her husband has died, she celebrates her new freedom rather than mourn his death. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, has a similar situation of oppression, as the main character is confined to her bed due to an illness that is classified as ‘nervousness’ (pg. 3). While Alina in “The Pram” is not oppressed due to her illness, she is seen as lower than the average person due to her job and the woman in charge of her oppresses her in a masculine way by expressing dominance over Alina (pg. 159). Oppression stems from the gender roles

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