The idea of marriage and husbands as a restraining and minacious force was - given societies condition - a reality for women, whom naturally harbor bitter indignation for their dependence on marriage and men, and their silence concerning their infantilization by the hands of both. Charlotte Perkin Gimmen’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Malmar McKnight’s ‘The Storm’ are both examples of women’s oppression within the domestic sphere, and how the idea of marriage as a madhouse suggests at the perversity and fear wives face in their own homes - to which they are vulnerable and helpless against, given their status in the Victorian patriarchy. These examples of feminist literature, which are written by women for women, serve as the articulation of female
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The passage begins with how the house appears “quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes [the narrator] think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.” Other than recognizing it as a beautiful estate, it is more importantly located ‘back from the road’ and consists of many ‘locks’ and ‘separate little houses’. The house is isolated from the rest of civilization, binding and restricting all it’s residents. The narrator’s emotions reflect the house’s physicality: isolated and confined. Inside the house, the protagonist notices the “big, airy room… with windows that look all ways.” In context with the subject of isolation and restriction, these windows are a view of a barricaded freedom. She is able to look outside her room, but not escape and participate beyond the prison walls her husband limits her to. Lastly, the narrator mentions her bedroom was once a nursery, a setting that describes the couple’s relationship inimitably. John regularly infantilizes the protagonist, treating her as you would a child than an adult by endearments such as “blessed little
The passage begins with how the house appears “quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes [the narrator] think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.” Other than recognizing it as a beautiful estate, it is more importantly located ‘back from the road’ and consists of many ‘locks’ and ‘separate little houses’. The house is isolated from the rest of civilization, binding and restricting all it’s residents. The narrator’s emotions reflect the house’s physicality: isolated and confined. Inside the house, the protagonist notices the “big, airy room… with windows that look all ways.” In context with the subject of isolation and restriction, these windows are a view of a barricaded freedom. She is able to look outside her room, but not escape and participate beyond the prison walls her husband limits her to. Lastly, the narrator mentions her bedroom was once a nursery, a setting that describes the couple’s relationship inimitably. John regularly infantilizes the protagonist, treating her as you would a child than an adult by endearments such as “blessed little