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The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Yellow Wallpaper
English 1302
22 November 2011
Main Character’s Outsider Theme
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator, Jane, is struggling to deal with her depression that she is suffering in a confined room that her husband, John put her in. John believes that this will cure Jane and make her better from her depression. Instead, Jane is slowly losing herself within the yellow wallpaper in the room causing her to become insane. Jane is not able to express her feelings with her husband or anyone else, but instead she bottles it up inside of her until she could no longer resist. The outsider theme is forced upon Jane from her husband’s way of treatment. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner also portrays the outsider theme statues. Emily Grierson, the main protagonist, is a woman whom is isolated and slowly gone insane after her father’s death. The community of the town knows very little of Emily but only watches her from a distance and hear rumors about her. Emily has not been paying her taxes like the rest of the community because she is supposedly a woman of aristocracy, her family held her in high regards even though she is supposed to resume paying her taxes. Miss Emily is from a family with pride but she is isolating herself with the community and eventually kills Homer, the man that she loves. She has put the outsider theme onto herself even before her father’s death occurred. In both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily”, the main character’s has shown their selves to have an outsider status from their psychological isolation, gender, and class.
Jane, in “They Yellow Wallpaper”, exemplifies the outsider theme by her forced psychological isolation from the world. All of Jane’s worries, thoughts, and fears are recorded into her personal journal. With the treatment that she is receiving, her social isolation is causing her to lose herself with reality. Jane said, “I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless



Cited: Curry, Renee R. “Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” (Special Issue: William Faulkner).” The Mississippi Quarterly 47.3 (1994): 391. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Edelstein, Sari. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Yellow Wallpaper.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 24.1 (2007): 72. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 11 Nov 2011. Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. 4th Ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2009. 667-674. Print. Getty, Laura J. “Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily.” The Explicator. 63.4 (2005): 230. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Cliffor. 4th Ed. Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin’s, 2009. 925-237. Print. Golden, Catherine. “The Yellow Wallpaper and Joseph Henry Hatfield’s original magazine illustrations.” ANQ 18.2 (2005): 53. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 11 Nov 2011. Klein, Thomas. “The ghostly voice of gossip in Faulkner’s a Rose for Emily.” The Explicator 65.4 (2007): 229. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Kriewald, Gary L. “The Widow of Windsor and the spinster of Jefferson: a possible source for Faulkner’s Emily Grierson.” The Faulkner Journal 19.1 (2003): 3. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 12 Nov 2011. Ramos, Peter. “Unbearable realism –freedom, ethics and Identity in the Awakening.” College Literature 37.4 (2010): 145. Academic OneFile (InfoTrac). Web. 11 Nov 2011.

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