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What Is The Difference Between The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour

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What Is The Difference Between The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour
Progressiveness towards women was a huge topic during the late 19th century as well as the beginning of the 20th. More than ever women started to fight for their rights and their freedom. They wanted to be interpreted as equal as men, and to be free from the norm that was a domestic household. This is more noticeable in the short stories published by women back in the day. Stories such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Story of an Hour” published by Kate Chopin. These stories are remembered in history because of how they demonstrated how women felt about these issues, and in turn the stories helped the audience understand their perspective. Women authors such as Gilman and Chopin masterfully utilized the location …show more content…
That is what was perceived in Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper. In this short story, the main character, Jane, is isolated from the world, and being locked in a bedroom due to her husband’s orders. Not even being able to write, she becomes mad and sees a woman in the yellow wallpaper attempting to get free. This short story is a metaphor to the struggle women had to go through during the 20th century. Back in the day, obeying your husband and having no freedom of what to do with yourself was the norm for women around the world. Because this story takes place mainly in an isolated room, the reader can view how the main character Jade, starts deteriorating, and becoming mad, eventually seeing another woman in the wallpaper; She tries to help the woman by tearing down the wallpaper. What Gilman attempted to portray is the struggle and the desperation of women back in the day attempting and grasping for freedom. It gave the story a more meaningful …show more content…
Such as “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Kate Chopin’s story also uses location to interpret a bigger meaning to the story, and both short stories deal with the oppression of women back in the day, they attempt to make the reader understand the perspective of the women’s situation, and how much they crave freedom from controlling spouses, and want to express themselves. It is easily perceived in “The Story of an Hour”, due to the narrative of the story. The main character of the story, Louise Mallard, has complicated heart problems, so when her husband is believed to have been killed in a train accident, the news of his husband’s passing is revealed to her in a gentle manner. She then locks herself in a room, then gradually and slowly turns her grief and sadness into a new found sense of freedom. She is overwhelmed by joy and newfound freedom, but dies of heart failure after seeing her husband alive. At the moment Louise finds out her husband is supposedly dead, she feels this wave of newfound relief, and a wave of freedom. Unlike “The Yellow Wallpaper”, this short story explains how many women like Louise would rather die a free woman than to be the slaves of their husbands in a more literal way. It is very symbolic and shows how back in the day it was regarded as a sensitive

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