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What Is The Difference Between The Yellow Wallpaper And A Jury Of Her Peers

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Both "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are works of literature that employ symbolism to convey their themes. In both stories, the authors use symbolism to represent the oppression of women in patriarchal societies and the consequences of that oppression. In "A Jury of Her Peers," the symbol of the birdcage is used to represent the confinement of women in their homes and society. Mrs. Hale discovers a birdcage in the Wright household and notices that the bird inside is dead, its neck broken. This represents the oppression of women and the destruction of their potential. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, the only two women on the scene, identify with the bird and empathize with its suffering, recognizing the parallel of their own confinement to their homes and society. This symbolizes the impact of patriarchal oppression on women's lives and the toll …show more content…

The protagonist of the story, a woman suffering from postpartum depression, is confined to a room with yellow wallpaper that she finds increasingly oppressive and disturbing. The wallpaper symbolizes the patriarchal society that confines women to prescribed roles and suppresses their creativity and autonomy. The protagonist's obsession with the wallpaper represents her own descent into madness, as she struggles against the constraints of her society and her own mental illness. Both stories show how women are oppressed by patriarchal societies and how that oppression has a profound impact on their mental and emotional well-being. The symbols used in both stories convey the sense of confinement and the destruction of potential that comes with that oppression. The use of symbolism in both works is an effective way to convey these themes and to make the reader empathize with the struggles of women in patriarchal

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Catherine owns a number of caged birds in her chamber. The birds symbolise freedom and the cages she keeps them in symbolises lack of freedom. “I told all this to the cages of birds in my chamber and they listened quite politely. I began to keep birds in order to hear them chirping, but most often now they have to listen to mine”. Symbolism helps show how her perspective changes as she matures.

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The metaphor of the birds also serves to create a sense of movement and tension within the poem, as the birds engage in a battle of wills that reflects the speaker's own struggle for

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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.

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Symbolism In “A Jury of Her Peers” Susan Glaspell’s, “A Jury of Her Peers”, took place during the early 1900s and focuses on the issues of sexism and social injustice that still exists today. In this feminist classic, Sheriff Peters and his wife, Mr. Hale and his wife, and the county attorney, Mr. Henderson go to the Wright Household to look for evidence to use against Mrs. Wright. When they arrive, the men disregard everything associated with women, whereas, the women look in debt, put themselves in Mrs. Wright's shoes, and find clues that could potentially prove that she killed her husband. While living in a male dominated society and continuously being belittled by the men, the women decide to not only break the law, but go against their husbands by hiding evidence. Throughout the story, Glaspell uses the symbols of the dead canary, the kitchen and the quilt to not only promote gender inequality roles but show what life must’ve been like for Minnie; imprisoned by her husband.

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679 Words | 3 Pages

Wright’s dominance and the chokehold of male superiority over women in society, described by Mrs. Hales, “Look at it! Its neck—look at its neck! It’s all—other side to” (Glaspell 607). His intrusion into the cage and killing of the bird symbolizes the control of Minnie’s character and the destruction of who she truly once was; “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird,” she said after that— “a thing that sang. She used to sing.

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Symbolism is used in dramas or stories to help show a hidden meaning in the story that the author wants to explain though the events of the story. For example, in “Trifles” the canary bird symbolizes Mrs. Wright. The canary bird symbolizes Mrs. Wright because it is extremely sweet and pretty like her but soon turned sad, lonely, and quiet because of entrapment. Mrs. Wright’s relationship with her husband started out fine but over time turned into neglect and emotional abuse. According to the scholarly source (Karagoz Gumuscubuk) women’s lives were formed and empowered under the restrictions of a domestic space.

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Marilyn Frye draws from her own personal experience as a feminist activist in the 1970s and 80s to writer her account of oppression . I believe that the historical context of this is key to appreciating Frye’s work as well as understanding the cause that she was specifically fighting for and the general movement she was part of. She using the metaphor of the birdcage to try to explain oppression. You are to imagine the oppressed group being stuck inside a birdcage, they cannot escape not due to any individual wire that makes up the cage but due to how they all work together to keep the group in it. It is all the binds of the cage that keep the oppressed group in .

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A third item found in the house is a canary and its cage which represents Minnie Wright’s freedom. Mrs. Peters finds a birdcage as they look for quilting materials and notice the bird is gone and the cage door is broken (1.1). The canary represents the freedom that was caged due to Minnie Wright’s marriage to her husband. The broken cage door symbolizes that she broke free to gain her freedom by killing her husband. The bird is not found initially, which symbolizes the freedom that the wife got once her husband died.

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One symbol Chopin uses are birds. Madame Reisz told Edna, beginning to act upon her self ownership, “‘The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings,” (Chopin 211). The strong bird is a symbol of strength and social incline. Through this bird, Kate Chopin displays what it soars over. The repressive society which many women on earth are stuck in.

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Glaspell uses symbols to bring attention to and expose the oppression of women in a patriarchal culture. One of the story's most memorable symbols is a canary that has died. The canary's death reflects the silencing of women's voices in a patriarchal society, as the bird symbolises female oppression (SERTEL 1007). The women understand that Minnie's only source of happiness and friendship during her suffocating marriage is the dead bird they find in her sewing basket. The canary's demise is also symbolic of the oppression and marginalization of women in patriarchal societies.

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835 Words | 4 Pages

The expectation of women in Edna’s class is to be pleasant and attentive to their husbands and children. Society shuns women who fail to fit into the correct stereotype. However, Edna’s husband, Léonce, and other men in her high society have freedom of movement and speech; they are free to complain, come, and go as they please. Before Edna’s journey with individualism begins, Léonce complains about the volume of a parrot, which symbolizes Edna; he criticizes its volume, a parallel to Edna’s outspokenness, and relocates to another room, a stark contrast to the physical and metaphorical cage that the parrot and Edna find themselves in, respectively (Chopin 43). The state of the wings on birds represents the strength to go beyond societal expectations.

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1122 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the generation, women have always been trapped in some way or another. In the short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ and the novel ‘The Awakening’ highlights the struggle of women in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s in society. The Yellow wallpaper is a short story about women giving birth and being imprisoned in a room with a weird view of the yellow wall-paper. This resulted in her hallucination lead to the development of mental illness. By the end of the story, she rips off the yellow wallpaper and kills her husband.

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2127 Words | 9 Pages

This is an interpretation that may have been intended by Jewett, especially with her usage of symbols like the whistle, the red-faced boy that used to chase Sylvia, and the gun, which serves as a symbol of masculinity and aggression in addition to its representation of destruction. Jewett seems to imply “strong gender issues” by “illuminat[ing] Sylvia’s intuitive fear of men” early in the story, and soon adds images of virginity, innocence, and even rape later on. As Werlock points out, the white heron can be seen as “a symbol of her [Sylvia’s] virginity and innocence,” while “images of seduction give way to those of rape when Sylvia climbs back down [the tree] with her dress smeared, torn, and tattered… reinforced with the image of the dead birds ‘stained and wet with blood’” (Werlock).

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The Symbolism of Birds In the history of literature, birds have always been a positive omen. In the novel “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr, birds appear numerous times throughout the novel, for many different characters and storylines. Characters like Marie-Laure, Werner, and Fredrick are all tied together through the reappearance of birds; comparing them and their storylines, almost as a symbol of their connection (from so far apart). In the novel, the impactful imagery of birds symbolizes freedom and individualism to make your own choices.

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She identified the yellow wallpaper as a metaphor for women’s discourse. The narrator’s underlying feelings of confusion, depression, and frustration was covered by the yellow wallpaper which she rips from the walls at the very end to reveal “what is elsewhere kept hidden and embodies patterns that the patriarchal order ignores, suppresses, fears as grotesque or fails to perceive at all” (35). The yellow wallpaper is interpreted as the conflict of gender inequality and the struggles of women in a patriarchal society. The imagery reflects on how women feel toward sexual inequality and the situation with

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