The Yellow Wallpaper And Story Of An Hour

Adrian Rodrigo
Sanei
Honors American Literature
1/4/2023
Title With the 19th century came various movements. People began to advocate for African American rights, women’s rights, and equality among all. With people beginning to advocate, came the literature movement of realism, including works from Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin. Chopin was the author of ‘Story of an hour’ and in her life she grew up with a lot of death surrounding her such as all her siblings, her father, and her grandmother causing her to have depression, so she decided to advocate for the importance of mental health. Similarly, Gilman was the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and in her life at a young age Gilman's father abandoned her and her family, and with

In “Story of an Hour” the structure is short and simple, mirroring the plot of the story where Mrs. Mallard learns of her husband’s death, and after this she goes into a state of insanity. This insanity is shown through the word choice, for example it says, “Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin 1). Another example is shortly after this, “But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching towards her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air” (Chopin 1). And at the end she learns that her husband is surprisingly alive, but unfortunately moments later she dies shown through this short simple sentence of, “When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills” (Chopin 2). With this line we can interpret Mrs. Mallard’s death in many ways but in the literary criticism “The Autonomous Female Self” it is stated that "Any interpretation that puts the disappointment and shock brought on by his return as the cause of Louise's death is as much a projection onto the events as the doctors' belief that the joy and shock caused by Brently's appearance are to blame." (Cunningham 2). With this and the word choice we conclude that Louise’s death is caused by fear of losing her freedom. Chopin indirectly shows that her death is caused by the fear of her

With Gilman’s experience she writes “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrating women’s mental health and how it is neglected. She does this through the word choice, for example when the narrator says, “temporary nervous depression” and “a slight hysterical tendency” we can interpret this as poor women's mental health. But Gilman wrote this to show doctors that their methods of treatment for woman were not good enough as men’s. We know this because in the literary criticism “A New Woman’s Journey”, it says “The changed she advocates involve much more than the readjustment of power relations: They involve transforming society's conception of what it means to be male or female, and what it means to be human” (Quawa). The narrator also emphasizes the importance of a woman’s mental health through the structure of the story because during the climax we see the peak of the narrator's insanity. And to add on at the end we see that the method they used to cure women's mental health problems does not work. With this we can conclude that through the story's structure and word choice, Gilman emphasizes the significance of women’s mental health and how it should be treated the same as men's mental