Ties of Freedom Short fiction is very interesting and thought provoking literature. Some works may have few themes or main ideas, and other may have several embedded into the writing. A shared theme between the short fiction stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, is freedom and confinement. The protagonist in these stories are both women who have trouble with a controlling husband. They do not have identical situations, but the overall conflict revolves around the way their spouses treat them as women. The authors of these stories have put underlying tones of feminism, and equality for women; which was a taboo topic during the time period in which these stories were written.
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Both stories have the same theme, freedom. The narrator of Gilman’s writing has postpartum depression, and her treatment is only making it worse. Her husband prescribed her isolation, and is controlling her every move. The narrator of the story states this, “And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (544). The protagonist of the story is unknowing to her confinement to her husband. She believes that he is now treating her as a patient and not a wife, however, her husband is controlling everything she does. She grows visibly angry and irritated at her husband, John. Gilman had embedded into her writing the works of a controlling husband, staged as a stren physician. The wife believes that there is a woman in the yellow wallpaper, crying to get out. She does not realise that this is actually a mirage of her. The isolation has made her believe that she is actually not alone in the room and that there is a woman living in the walls. She tries to tear and rub the wallpaper off to free the woman but only makes it worse. This is a metaphor for her own mind. With every step to get the woman out of the wall, she falls deeper into insanity. The narrator nervous condition pushes the plot forward until both the story, and the narrator reach a climax of hysteria. Once she has torn the wallpaper off, she has a full mental break, and John collapse once he finds his wife in the state that she is in. All of this ties into the theme Gilman was getting across, which is freedom away from a controlling
Both stories have the same theme, freedom. The narrator of Gilman’s writing has postpartum depression, and her treatment is only making it worse. Her husband prescribed her isolation, and is controlling her every move. The narrator of the story states this, “And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (544). The protagonist of the story is unknowing to her confinement to her husband. She believes that he is now treating her as a patient and not a wife, however, her husband is controlling everything she does. She grows visibly angry and irritated at her husband, John. Gilman had embedded into her writing the works of a controlling husband, staged as a stren physician. The wife believes that there is a woman in the yellow wallpaper, crying to get out. She does not realise that this is actually a mirage of her. The isolation has made her believe that she is actually not alone in the room and that there is a woman living in the walls. She tries to tear and rub the wallpaper off to free the woman but only makes it worse. This is a metaphor for her own mind. With every step to get the woman out of the wall, she falls deeper into insanity. The narrator nervous condition pushes the plot forward until both the story, and the narrator reach a climax of hysteria. Once she has torn the wallpaper off, she has a full mental break, and John collapse once he finds his wife in the state that she is in. All of this ties into the theme Gilman was getting across, which is freedom away from a controlling