The Yellow Wallpaper And Story Of An Hour Analysis

The main characters in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson and “The Story of an hour” by Kate Chopin are both 19th century women that are unhappy with their husbands and lives. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” a woman is trapped in her bedroom by her cruel husband, and eventually goes crazy due to this and begins to see a woman in the wallpaper. The woman in “Story of an hour” felt trapped by the mundanity of life, and felt free when she discovered her husband had died, but when he comes home and she finds out he isn’t dead, she has a heart attack from shock, and dies. Stetson’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Chopin’s “Story of an hour” share the theme of women feeling trapped and wanting freedom from their husbands. These feelings are emphasized through their emotional state and the stories’ physical setting. The difference between the two is that in Chopin’s story the woman loves her husband, and in Stetson’s the woman doesn’t.
One of the main reasons these two stories are so similar is the emotional state of the two characters. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the woman’s husband is cruel to her, causing her to be emotionally damaged. “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.” (Stetson 2). This quote proves that her husband is cruel to her. He has her convinced that she has a ‘nervous condition’, and she believes she is being unreasonable when she gets angry with John, when really it is a justified anger. John’s cruel treatment towards her causes her to be essentially brainwashed (Stetson 2). In “Story of an hour” the woman is bored of her life and the routine of it. Both of these women’s feelings lead to feelings of entrapment. The woman in Chopin’s story felt so trapped by life, that she was happy when she found out her husband had died. She felt free from him entirely, and it elated her. In her bedroom she kept whispering; “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin 2). Both of the women’s emotional states result in their feelings of entrapment and thirst for freedom. The women in both stories are trapped by their physical setting. …show more content…
In Stetson’s story, the house the woman is in makes her uncomfortable and afraid. “That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don’t care, there is something strange about this house, I can feel it.” (Stetson 2). As well as this, she is physically trapped inside this house by her husband. He forces her to stay at the house, although she doesn’t like it. She also is forced to stay in the bedroom, with the yellow wallpaper that she despises. In “Story of an Hour” the woman lives on the countryside, so she could feel very secluded from people, leading to her feeling trapped. She is bored with her life, including where she lives, and she wants to be free. Both of these women are feeling trapped by their setting, one way or another. While the main characters cause these two stories to be very similar, there is one major difference between them. In Chopin’s story, the woman loves her husband, even though she wants to be free. She cried immediately after hearing her husband had died, proving that she had loved him. “She knew that she