The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour
In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper, both narrators are repressed wives. Both authors show us women who feel trapped and do not have control of even the most obvious aspects of their lives. Freedom is achieved in very unconventional ways in both these stories, but the kind of freedom these narrators achieve is not available to most women of the time.
In Kate Chopin’s "Story of an Hour," the narrator seems like a typical wife. Her husband has gone somewhere in the beginning of the story, and when she gets news of his death, she is at first very sad. Then she begins to understand the ramifications of him being gone, the idea that she can now live for herself, and she is free. "She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" (Chopin, Pg. 122) The narrator realizes exactly what her husband's death means. "There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature." (Chopin, Pg. 122) However, this happiness is brief because she then gets news that in fact, her husband is still alive. She dies of heart failure. Everyone believes that she has died from "the joy that kills," (Chopin, Pg. 123), but the reader knows that she has died over the unpleasant shock that her husband is still alive. While Mrs. Mallard has not been miserable in her marriage, nor did she spend her time thinking about whether her marriage was happy, she has now had a glimpse of what her life would be like alone. She loved the thought and was excited about facing life alone. The reader understands that while the narrator did not necessarily know it at the time, she was still repressed by her marriage and that constant bending of her will to another human being.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator, who...
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