1
Salem G.
English 105
13 November 17
Loneliness to Insanity and Instability
The two short stories “A Rose for Emily'' by William Faulkner and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are about the life of abused women in a male-dominated culture composed from a feminist point of view. The female characters portrayed in those stories are dehumanized and constrained into isolation by the domineering and oppressive male authorities in each of their lives. Despite the fact that, they're composed with a similar viewpoint and during a similar period. The stories are comparable through the ladies exhibited in both of the stories encounter moments of insanity, loneliness, sentiments of being controlled by others, and a loss of psychological self-control. The themes of the stories are love and hate. In spite of the likenesses, these stories also have various contrasts. For instance, the depiction of the characters in the two stories is very different. One of the significant difference is the perspective in which these stories are narrated as “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written somehow in autobiographical fashion whereas “A Rose for Emily'' is penned down in the third person point of view. By analyzing the narrator's point of view, Imagery, the characters, and the setting of each of the stories, the readers will have a better comprehension of the struggles for each protagonist experience and the expectations of women in society during the time each novel was composed.
In the stories “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, discuss how two women are encountering the same emotional situations they need to persevere. Both of these stories express the emotional and physical trials the characters have to endure on an everyday basis. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” it demonstrates a woman who is persecuted and is suffering from depression and loneliness. Likewise, In “A Rose for Emily” we see the endeavor of maintaining a tradition and struggling with depression. Both of the stories resemble wild changes and the battles of acknowledgment the characters face amid those changes. In Faulkner’s story, Emily Grierson begins as an innovative, optimistic young woman who turns into this murderous, secretive old lady. Faulkner views the society in his story as having a traditional and unbending mental state of mind. For most of her life, Emily was not just protected and controlled by her dad; she additionally dealt with the mental abuse that accompanied his overbearing identity. The outcome of her not completely encountering life and her dad's dominance results in Emily's powerlessness to adapt to current society and lead a typical stable life. According to Faulkner "After her father's death, she went out very little after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all" (Faulkner 433). Emilly spent most of her life hidden from the rest of the world by her wealthy Southern father. After her father's death, she was impulsive, and she would not relinquish her dad's dead body. Soon after her dad's demise she meets Homer Barron, nonetheless, she doesn't marry him, but somewhat she kills him with arsenic. Emily continues to live in a further isolation from the rest of the world. It is later found when Emily dies at the age of 74 she did indeed really kill Homer and she was keeping his rotting corpse in bed with her. Correspondingly, Gilman makes this female character who has post pregnancy anxiety. The woman husband is a medical doctor, and he wants to fix her sickness. He trusts she can change by being in a secluded area, isolated from everyone. The narrator is very displeased with the room her husband had selected for them a room with banned windows, an immovable bed, and unusual yellow wallpaper which causes her gradually lose her hold on reality and goes mad. Unlike in Faulkner's story, Gilman deals with the society in a different way. In her novel, one of the leading factors is that mistreatment overruled the women rights. The stories demonstrate the various feelings the two characters confront while being in a separated range for an extended period.
In the two stories "A Rose for Emily" and "The Yellow Wallpaper," setting is an important factor, and it helps tie in the characters and the plot of the story. In "A Rose for Emily," occurred in a small town in the deep south. Faulkner's utilization of this specific era or classification is effective in giving the peruser a comprehension or background to the values and beliefs of the characters in the story. The town of Jefferson is a fallen heritage. The town looked upon Miss Emily as the only trace of that greater time. This fact gives the reader an understanding of the mindset of the town, who is describing Miss Emily's story to us in a form resembling a gossip circle, where stories of different townspeople are pieced together and of Miss Emily, the protagonist who lived alone with the exception for her servant. Renee R. Curry’s article “Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" (1994) states “The Emily on the page of the text proves a subversive cover for the activity occurring in the white space beneath the eyes of the patriarchy. Emily does, in fact, exist while the patriarchal community is not looking…” (Curry, par. 27). Faulkner's setting enables the readers to comprehend the attitude and actions of the town. The townspeople appear to be strangely fascinated with Miss Emily as a relic of an older time. They have placed her in an extraordinary position among the others and while they haven’t kept up any immediate contact with her; even after her death, they’re still curious about her mystery. This can be attributed to the way that as the circumstances are transforming, they require somebody to reestablish or maintain their southern pride or dignity and as she is a Grierson, she is their only link to that past. They feel that she was setting an awful example since she is supposed to be of a higher class and symbolize morals and decency in the changing south they feel that they have to do something to restore her ethical standing. Linda Wagner- Martin’s essay “Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Centenary” (2003) reveals many conflicts inherent in women's endeavoring to lead acceptable female lives, perhaps the most troublesome is that of motherhood, its attendant responsibilities, and it’s practically inevitable loss of self-identity. She explains, "the extent to which maternity, as option or experience, serves as a catalyst for a mental breakdown" (Martin, par. 3). Martin discusses women's fear of childbirth, the guilt of not having children opposing the satisfaction with bearing a child, and other dimensions of women's psychology as it is affected by motherhood; and concludes the connection amongst parenthood and madness seems to have no parallel in the lives of men. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the setting contributes to the narrator's insanity. When she initially observes the house, she cherishes it. She supposes the house will be an ideal place to recover from her anxious condition, yet that does not occur because her husband limits her to the room so that her health will improve. The narrator's psychological illness disintegrates to the point of madness due to her isolation in the bedroom, with only the yellow wallpaper to look at what she considers "repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight" (Gilman 421). The setting in this story is very significant because this story is about the connection between the storyteller and her better half. The narrator's husband neglects his significant other's feelings. He believes that he knows more about her body and her needs than she does. John disregards her sentiments and forces the narrator to remain in bed in the room with yellow wallpaper. The room becomes a prison for the narrator, and she urgently needs to get outside. However since her husband wouldn’t enable it to happen, he’s portrayed as her jailer rather than her partner in life.
The perspective of every story is told from a firsthand account of the occasions that happen. In “A Rose for Emily,” the story is told from an outsider’s perspective, someone who has watched and observed all that is composed down. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also written in a first person. However, the story is told from the main character's diary. Everything that we read consists of the unknown character’s feelings, thoughts, and consciousness, or unconsciousness. Since we are reading what the character has written in her diary, the story is told in present tense. Both stories demonstrate the impacts of society and the slow decay on a particular woman. The title of each piece becomes important to the plot and ultimate result. In several ways, each title takes shape to depict symbolism in some sense. While Faulkner’s utilization of the color white in this story wasn’t evident at first, it soon turns out to be certain that the color white represents innocence and youth. The Grierson house was white, and when Miss Emily was a young girl, and she wore white dresses instead of the dark clothing she wore in her last years. This represents the innocence of Miss Emily before she becomes a casualty of herself and her refusal to change. According to Thomas Dilworth in the article “A Romance to Kill for: Homicidal Complexity in Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’” (1999) clarifies that“The metaphorical rose they give has, however, very sharp thorns--revelations of craziness, murder, and necrophilia. It implies the judgment, the self-exonerating projection, and the paradoxical indebtedness of people to its scapegoat” (Dilworth, par. 25). Dilworth asserts that William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a recounted story that is very dark and somewhat distorted. It utilizes a large number of the Southern themes that are present in Faulkner’s other works but extends beyond mere themes of death and addresses ideas of parental abuse, isolation, and necrophilia. Dilworth underpins that “A Rose For Emily” never shows a genuine rose, however, the title itself is symbolic. The rose symbolizes the idea of love since young sweethearts regularly give each different roses to express their affections. With so many admirers in her youth, it appears to be inescapable that Emily will accept a rose from one of them, yet she never does. When she meets Homer, it seems like she may finally have found her true love. That idea is preserved forever when she kills Homer, just as a rose is preserved between the pages of a memory book and just as Homer's corpse and her wedding day clothes are preserved in the room that she has sealed off in her home. Likewise, in the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” The narrator's honest conduct represents how men would treat women as children who drove ladies to craziness. The yellow wallpaper is the most visible image found in the story. The yellow wallpaper symbolizes how women were depicted in the nineteenth century. Catherine J. Golden’s article “Marking Her Territory: Feline Behavior in ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’” (2007) acknowledges that the story outlines the pragmatist imagery. Realist symbolism is defined as symbols that are created in literature or art, seem imaginary, in fact, indicate matters in the real world. Golden states that “ the narrator is moving into the mindset of a domesticated feline, acting cat-like, not merely animal-like. She is marking her territory and scenting it, gaining dominance over patriarchy by taking control of her environment…” ( Golden, par. 2). The storyteller fundamentally feels that her life is dull and exhausting which can prompt her committing suicide. Later on in the story, the wallpaper was portrayed as “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream” (Gilman 426). The pattern in the wallpaper represents the storyteller's mindset. The narrator calls herself “hideous” and “unreliable.” Women during this period were frequently viewed as weak and unreliable.
Women have always struggled for equal rights with men. In the stories, A Rose for Emily written by William Faulkner, and The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, discuss how two ladies are encountering the same enthusiastic circumstances they need to endure. Both of these stories express the passionate and physical trials the characters need to persist on a regular basis.The nineteenth century was a period where women were repressed and controlled by their significant other and other male figures. Ladies were frequently depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men.
Work Cited
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