Gilman And Hurston: A Comparative Analysis

Marriage is widely seen as a sacred union between two individuals, who promise to love and cherish one another until death. However, it has also been historically known to dichotomize and assign roles to each partner. In a marriage between a man and a woman, the former is traditionally designated as the leader of the household and the breadwinner. The latter is given the roles of mother and homemaker. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, these gender roles are shown to be the bane of a happy marriage, especially for the wife. Both Gilman and Hurston demonstrate a concordance that gender roles assigned to a husband and wife are inherently misogynistic and damaging for a happy and healthy marriage. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman portrays the ill effects of marital gender roles through the characterization of the narrator and her husband, John. The narrator suffers from mental illness and is trying to recuperate with the guidance of her physician husband. John’s roles as her husband and her physician create an unbalanced distribution of power in their relationship, allowing him to assert a tremendous amount of dominance over her as two strong authority figures. This is apparent when the narrator complains about
Gilman and Hurston both portrayed vastly different marriages that shared themes of control and oppression of women by their husbands. The traditional idea of the husband being the dominant partner who has control of every aspect of marriage, including his wife, and the wife being the submissive and obedient partner is a very toxic and misogynist mindset to possess. Marriage should instead be a contract between two individuals of equal standing who make a commitment to each other to love, cherish, and most importantly respect one