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Comparing 'The Yellow Wallpaper And A Jury Of Her Peers'

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Authors, especially female authors, have long used their writing to emphasize and analyze the feminist issues that characterize society, both in the past and the present. Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Susan Glaspell wrote narratives that best examined feminist movements through the unreliable minds of their characters. In all three stories, “The Story of an Hour”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and “A Jury of Her Peers”, the authors use characterization, symbolism, and foreshadowing to describe the characters’ apparent psychosis or unreasonable behavior to shed light on the social issues that characterized the late 19th century and early 20th century. Penning many stories that demonstrate her opinions on the social issues of the era, …show more content…

The story opens with Mrs. Wright imprisoned for strangling her husband. A group, the mostly composed of men, travel to the Wright house in the hopes that they find incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright. Instead, the two women of the group discover evidence of Mr. Wright’s abuse of his wife. Through the women’s unique perspective, the reader glimpses the reality of the situation and realizes that, though it seemed unreasonable at the time, Mrs. Wright had carefully calculated her actions. When asked about the Wrights, one of the women, Mrs. Hale, replies “I don’t think a place would be a cheerful for John Wright’s being in it” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 7). The men of the group, much like John in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” consider themselves more capable than the women and refuse to consider Mrs. Wright as anything other than irrational. The men leave the women to their “trifles” on the first floor, where they discover a broken bird cage, and the bird’s body, broken, carefully wrapped in a small, decorative box. They realize that Mr. Wright had wrung the neck of his wife’s beloved bird and broken its cage. Mrs. Wright, once known for her cheerfulness and beautiful singing, she stopped singing when she encountered Mr. Wright. Just like he did with the bird, Mr. Wright choked the life out of his wife until, finally, Mrs. Wright literally choked the life out of her husband. Like the bird, she had to break her own cage before she found freedom. Like Chopin and Gilman before her, Glaspell uses an irrational character to illustrate the way men often rejected and looked down upon women, especially in the 19th and 20th

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Rhetorical Analysis: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings In her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelo commemorates and admires strong independent black women and strives to become a well-educated woman herself. Through the use of visual imagery, Angelou describes Mrs. Flowers as a refined black woman to convey to the audience a feeling of pride and recognition for all sophisticated black women and a sense of empathy for Maya. Maya compares Mrs. Flowers to the “women in English novels” who had the luxury to sit “in front of roaring fireplaces” and drink “tea incessantly from silver trays” (93). The visual description of the “fireplace” and “tea” demonstrates to the reader the value that white women have in this society.

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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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1913 Words | 8 Pages

Allegories are used for many reasons, such as debating about politics, or create moral meanings, but what intrigues me is that authors are able to express their ideas on controversies going on in the world with their stories, at the same time, it give a better context to the story, and give a peek of how it would feel if the reader was in the situation, just with an allegory. Kate Chopin, most assumedly, was a supporter of the feminist movement, and she showed her support of the women’s movement through her allegories, for example her short story “The Story of an Hour.” "Story of an Hour” starts out with Richard, Brently Mallard’s friend, came home with terrible news that Louise Mallard’s husband, Brently Mallard died in a train accident.

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A tarnish yellow creature stands in fear as it lingers behind bars viewing the shadow of a male figure. However, the acts of oppression can enrage the creature to break free. Feminist writer, Susan Glaspell, in the short story, Trifles, asserts how women are oppressed by male dominance in their marriages in the 1916. Glaspell’s purpose is to promote awareness of how much isolation and an abusive relationship can influence a woman’s insanity towards men. She adopts a calm yet caution tone in order to express the effect men have on women.

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699 Words | 3 Pages

Mrs. Wright is the main character in Susan Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles. While Mrs. Wright is being held by the police for her husband’s murder, a few men go to investigate her home, and a few women go along to gather some of her things to bring to her in jail. As the ladies collect Mrs. Wright’s possessions, they begin to come across trifles. The trifles include: a messy kitchen, a poorly sewn quilt, and a broken bird cage with a missing bird. The women view these items as important clues, and withhold their findings from the men so that they could help Mrs. Wright out of her troubles.

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To develop the setting of the house, Gilman uses vivid diction to craft an image of the house to show how men a imprisoning the minds of women in Victorian society. Gilman introduces the house as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity” (1066). Although her description uses the words “romantic felicity” which seem to carry a light tone, these words are preceded by the dark statement that the estate is a “haunted house”. By contrasting these two tones, Gilman foreshadows that the house in which the narrator is interned for treatment might seem magnificent and grand, but in reality, the house and the rest cure will turn out to be her doom. The foreshadowing hints that Gilman uses the contrasting description of the house to point out how physicians like John are oppressing women by denying them their right to a postpartum experience with their baby, a thing of “romantic felicity,” and instead, turning it into an ordeal as nightmarish as a “haunted house.”

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844 Words | 4 Pages

Louisa, like the canary, acts anxious, lively, and concerned when Joe enters the room. She constantly feels he will come in and bring a considerable amount of disorder into her uptight and organized lifestyle. His green bars in which his whole world revolves represent the long-lasting and ongoing engagement. The canary always attempts to depart and free himself, but in the fourteen years, it never could bring himself to completing the task. Louisa and the bird feel trapped.

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575 Words | 3 Pages

In the story, Mrs. Hale often recalls Minnie Wright as being a joyful girl who loved to sing, much like the songbird. Then they found that the songbird had its neck wrung by who they presumed was John Wright. Mrs. Peters then recalls a similar act of cruelty done to her by a neighborhood boy killing her kitten, she states, “If they hadn’t held me back I would have hurt him.” (679) The cruel act symbolizes how he had treated Minnie throughout the years that they had been married.

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741 Words | 3 Pages

A dead bird, a dead man, a jailed wife, and five people to investigate such things. In “A Jury of Her Peers” in order to find the guilty culprit, there was a need to find a motive. The men would spend all day searching for the reason someone would murder the Mr. Wright, and so would the women. When the women finally did find a motive, they would hide it from the men. They had the right to do so because they themselves had felt the same way Mrs. Wright did, the men were being disrespectful, and the women were dismissed from the men’s sides to look upon things with no significance.

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786 Words | 4 Pages

Women writers and protagonists ruled these works. These works are the literary compositions of Alice Walker’s “Roselily,” Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek,” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” In all three of these manuscripts the protagonists face valuing the worth of their marriages, weighing their means of freedom, and changing their life statuses. To begin with, “Roselily”is about a mother of four children; however, only three children live with her. She’s a seamstress at a factory and yurns for a better life for her and her children.

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172 Words | 1 Pages

In the play, there were two characters by the name of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale who looks to show some sympathy and understanding for Mrs. Wright killing Mr. Wright. Although, I find it amazing that both are allowed at the crime scene wishing that they should have been more

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540 Words | 3 Pages

“The Story of an Hour” and “A Pair of Silk Stockings” are both Written By Kate Chopin. The other story “The Yellow Wall Paper” is written by Charlotte Perkins. Women wrote all three of these stories in the 1800’s. During this time woman were treated as second-class citizens. Very much like African Americans

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571 Words | 3 Pages

The Story of an Hour is a short story written by one of the prominent American 20th Century authors, Kate Chopin. Originally published as “The Dream of an Hour” on April 19, 1984 in the magazine Vogue, the story revolves around the last hour of the protagonist. Chopin is considered as a feminist writer ahead of her time considering her works heavily emphasizes the feelings of women who seek for liberation in life, a subject that was considered foreign or a taboo during her time. The Story of an Hour is one of her short stories which portray a woman’s role in the patriarchal society which is still prevalent in the 21st century.

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1015 Words | 5 Pages

Female Freedom Like a bird in a cage, a controlling relationship can make a women feel trapped in an inescapable abyss. The rigors from a controlling, male-dominant relationship can absolutely eat away at a women's will-power to take action against it. Both of these stories were caught in the midst of the Progressive Era. A time when women suffered persecution just because of their gender.

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791 Words | 4 Pages

This shows a balance between gender roles, as well as the embracing progressive changes within culture and society. In the story “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, a third-person omniscient narrator, relates how Mrs. Louise Mallard, the protagonist, experiences the euphoria of freedom rather than the grief of loneliness after hearing about her husband’s death. Later, when Mrs. Mallard discovers that her husband, Mr. Brently Mallard, still lives, she realizes that all her aspiration for freedom has gone. The shock and disappointment kills Mrs. Mallard.

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