Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper - Essay Example

I. Several stories we have read present marriage in a negative light, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In this story,marriage is seen as a prison. The narrator’s husband forces her to undergo complete bed rest to get over an illness. He takes away her notebook and pencils to keep her from writing, and he even forbids her from spending much time with their baby son. The narrator is a prisoner in her own house – captive to her husband’s will and whims. Her own thoughts and feelings are not even taken into consideration. We see almost the exact opposite situation in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Mitty, the main character, is trying to escape his life, of which his wife is a very disappointing part. He does not even seem to recognize her when she audibly interrupts his airplane daydream. The reader begins to see why Mitty might want to forget his marriage when his interactions with his wife are presented in more detail. She is a bossy woman, who doesn’t seem to understand him at all – or even care about him very much. She commands him to get overshoes, even though he insists he doesn’t need them. And later, when he says he has been thinking, she thinks that he must be sick. It is as if, to Mitty’s wife, he has no life - and no thoughts - apart from her. Two people who are too wrapped up in their own thoughts to care much about the other person are married to each other in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral.” The reader begins to wonder how, or why, the main character and his wife ever got together. He is jealous of her friendship with the blind man – so much so that his wife is afraid he will ruin her friend’s visit. She even questions the narrator’s love for her. It seems that she is emotionally more intimate with the blind man than she is her own husband, and this could explain her husband’s jealousy. In this partnership, we do not see one marriage partner trying to dominate the other. Instead, we see two hopeless people living in the same house. They might be married to each other just because they feel like no one else would want to marry them. Or perhaps they feel that it is their civic duty to get married. This same thinking is the reason Ivan Ilych marries his wife in Tolstoy’s story. Ilych is obsessed with doing the right thing, and getting married is one those things that he thinks is right because society tells him it is. Soon, though, Ilych finds out that marriage is not as pleasant as he originally thought it was going to be, so he decides to bury himself in work. Even this does not give him the satisfaction he seeks, but it lets him escape his unhappy marriage for a while. Why are all the marriages in these stories presented in such a negative light? Perhaps it is because the authors themselves experienced bad marriages, and are writing from their own experience. It could simply be because the best stories are made up of conflict, and one of the best sources of conflict is interpersonal relationships. Every person who has ever lived has experienced some sort of conflict with another human being; therefore, readers can more easily identify with characters whose love lives are less than perfect. The reader can also distance him/herself from the negative perceptions of marriage by remembering that these stories are fictitious. The fiction label allows the reader to see that, even though the reader can identify with some of what the character is experiencing, that does not mean that everything in life happens the way it does in stories. The reader can then form his/her own, more positive, view of marriage, if he/she so desires. It is important to note, however, that not all of the stories present such a negative view of marriage. In Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the dying man thinks of his wife fondly. Unlike the characters mentioned above, he is not trying to escape his marriage. Rather, he is trying to escape his circumstances by daydreaming of his happy home. II. Peyton Farquhar’s escape in Ambrose Bierce’s story is short-lived, but it is effective. He is able to distance himself from the pain of his execution and return home to the family that he loves. And he ultimately dies, which is another kind of escape, although it is a final escape. He accepts his death in the most honorable way he can. He does not fight against the social norms and constraints of his time. In Farquhar’s mind (and in Bierce’s mind, apparently), there is very little room for rebelling against the entrapment of society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” rebels against society’s attempts to trap her. First of all, she is a woman living in the Victorian era. Women living in this time period were expected to be wives and mothers – and that was all they were allowed to be. They were not expected to have jobs outside of the home. They were not even supposed to participate in the same mental pursuits as men because it was not believed that their minds kind handle it. Gilman’s narrator is a writer. She uses her mind and her writing skills in a way that frightens her husband. He is afraid that she will over-work herself, so he takes her writing instruments away. But this action only makes things worse. Instead of just being trapped in a male dominated society, the narrator becomes trapped in her mind. This, as we see, is becomes dangerous because the narrator loses her mind. In this case, then, the author seems to be telling the reader that it is good to break tradition and break free from social constraints because doing so will preserve his/her sanity. A more ambiguous message is given in Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man.” In this story, Dave Saunders wants a gun so badly that he will lie and manipulate in order to get it, and he does. He believes that having a gun will make him a man and will give him the respect he deserves. He finds out differently, though, once he gets the gun. He shoots his employer’s mule, and his father says that he will have to keep working in order to pay off the dead mule. Dave decides that he would rather run away to another place where he could find respect with his gun than stay at home and earn respect as a man who lives up to his responsibilities. It seems that the author is advocating running away from social obligations if they take away from your self-respect. A closer look calls this into question, however. Dave is leaving his responsibilities and all his loved ones behind simply because he does not want to pay for a dead mule. He has learned nothing about what it really takes to be a responsible man, and the author seems to emphasize this point. The reader is left with the idea that we are all trapped, in some way, by the choices we make and the consequences of those choices. The narrator and his wife, in Carver’s “Cathedral,” seem to be living unhappily with the consequences of their choices. That is, at least, until the blind man, Robert, shows up. At the beginning of the story, the reader sees how full of stereotypical, fearful ideas the narrator’s mind is. He expects blind people to act a certain way, and Robert does none of the typical things a blind man “should” do. The narrator is impressed by this, and he becomes even more impressed with Robert as the evening progresses. Robert eventually helps the narrator to “see” the cathedral without using his eyes, and all the stereotypes and the old ideas fall away from the narrator’s mind. He is changed for the better. Carver seems to be suggesting that if we break free from our own narrow-minded ideas and hang-ups, we, too, will be changed for the better. III. The way that Carver’s “Cathedral” narrator changes during the course of the story implies that the narrator does, in fact, have free will. He has the ability to make his own decisions and change his mind about some things when presented with a different truth. He goes from trying to escape his own reality to embracing it wholeheartedly. There is no outside force directing all of this change. The narrator has control over everything himself, and this gives Carver’s story a great depth of meaning and purpose. William Faulkner’s character Abner Snopes, in “Barn Burning,” is a man with a purpose – his purpose. He fights against the system every chance he gets. This often gets him in trouble, but he does not really seem to mind – not even for his family’s sake. When things get too hot to handle in the current town, they move on to a different town, under Abner’s direction. His family does not seem to have much of a chance to exercise their free will – they just follow Abner blindly – but Abner does. He exercises his free will frequently by setting fire to barns, trying to blame others, and then running. Abner’s free will gives the story its reason for existence. His determination to be his own person and have his own way is the story. Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” is another story about someone who runs away from his problems when his free will is stifled. Wright seems to believe that Dave has control over his circumstances, although his circumstances, in a way, drive him to run away from home like he does. Still, he is not willing to submit to the authority of either his employer or his father. He makes the decision, freely, to leave home and find some other place where he can live out his dream of being a man. And he leaves. There is nothing holding him back. This facet of Dave’s character adds strength to Wright’s story. If Dave did not have free will, and he stayed to take care of all of his responsibilities at home, he would seem weaker, and the ending of the story would be much weaker. In fact, it would be a huge let-down. Dave’s ability to recognize his ability to make his own decisions leads to a satisfying conclusion. Less satisfying conclusions are presented in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” The stories by these authors seem to indicate that they believe people (especially women) do not have free will at all. The narrator of Gilman’s story, as mentioned above, is subject to the whims of her husband. She is not given the opportunity to think for herself. Tessie Hutchinson, in Jackson’s story, is given the capacity to think for herself, but it does not really matter. She is completely a victim of fate. Her life (and her death) are dictated by the rules of her community, and the dreaded lottery. Neither of these women is given free will, and neither of these stories end happily. Their stories, however, are memorable, and perhaps even more so because of the absence of free will in their lives. Perhaps this is the point the authors were trying to make: life without free will is tragic. IV. Some other common literary techniques, and representative stories, are outlined below. The authors used each of these elements in order to make the most impact with their writing, so that their stories would be enjoyable, believable, and memorable. Narration 3rd person: The Lottery; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; The Blue Hotel; Hills Like White Elephants; The Open Boat 1st person: The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; The Yellow Wallpaper; A&P; Sonny’s Blues; Greville Fane Tone Light: The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; Why I Live at the P.O.; A Good Man Is Hard to Find; Greville Fane Dark: Cathedral; The Lottery; The Horse Dealer’s Daughter; Gusev; The Man Who Was Almost a Man; The Management of Grief Surrealism The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; The Metamorphosis; Death by Landscape; A Wall of Fire Rising; King of the Bingo Game Dysfunctional Relationships Cathedral; Why I Live at the P.O.; A Rose for Emily; Barn Burning; The Lady with a Dog; Shiloh; Hills Like White Elephants; Public Appearances Feminism The Yellow Wallpaper; The Horse Dealer’s Daughter; Public Appearances; The Story of an Hour Psychological Blindness Cathedral; Greville Fane; The Death of Ivan Ilych; Gimpel the Fool Death A Continuity of Parks; The Death of Ivan Ilych; Death by Landscape; The Story of an Hour; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; Gusev; A Rose for Emily; Gimpel the Fool; The Management of Grief Read More