Similarities Between Jane Eyre And The Yellow Wallpaper

The literary works of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte, "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman explore the hardships of women in patriarchal society and the importance of independence for women. Though each narrator depicts common themes, they are represented differently with each narrator highlighting different views when showing the limitations of women in patriarchal society during the 19th and early 20th centuries, women's mental health and the need for autonomy over one's identity.

Virginia Woolf argues throughout “A room of one's own '' that women have been repeatedly demeaned in the literary world due to a lack of financial and social independence. Additionally she states that

In “Jane Eyre”, Jane struggles with her own self worth after enduring both emotional and physical abuse for a large portion of her life, as well as dealing with the unbending society that does not value her due to her destitution. Despite this, Jane enforces her own autonomy and is able to climb her way out of pottery, beating the oppression that she suffered under for most of her life with a new sense of identity and assertiveness. While, in “The yellow wallpaper” we see the gradual dissension into madness of the narrator who suffers from postpartum depression, and her inability to make decisions for herself due to her husband. Confined to a room with yellow wallpaper, she becomes delusional and becomes convinced that the wallpaper is a reflection of her mental state. The yellow wallpaper becomes tied entirely to the narrator's identity as she is locked in the room and unable to leave. The narrator's spiral into madness can be seen as a clear consequence of oppression caused by marital and patriarchal roles. While both narrators depict the importance of women's mental health and the importance of women's autonomy in a patriarchal society, there is a clear difference in how these themes are depicted. While the “yellow wallpaper” ends with the narrator who has been driven to madness, ripping off the yellow wallpaper because she believes there is a woman trapped behind it, “Jane Eyre” ends in a happy ending with Jane married to Rochester who she had a child with. The ways in which marriage is depicted when in relation to women's mental health and patriarchal oppression are completely different, with “The yellow wallpaper” depicting marriage as a clear catalyst for womens madness and “Jane Eyre” showing that patriarchal oppression or madness doesn't necessarily have to occur within a marriage. Though there are no elements of womens madness in “A room of one's own” we can