Silas Marner

Who is the woman really trapped in the story? The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman begins with the narrator, a woman who is diagnosed by her husband with temporary nervous depression with the only cure being to rest and being restrained from everyday activities. They rent an estate for the summer, John her husband, decides that she should stay in the room upstairs which is desolated with neglected furniture and the yellow paper. The narrator is not attached to the room, but she obeys…

“In an Artist’s Studio” is a short Petrarchan sonnet written by Christina Rossetti in England during the year 1856. The sonnet encompasses the persona of the author who is watching an artist paint a portrait of a young woman. As the work progresses, the painter fails to capture the realistic beauty of his model, and begins fantasizing of the perfection she could be. Rossetti, being aware of gender inequality in this era, uses the subtle message of this sonnet to propose that the value of a woman…

Throughout Chapter 11 of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”, readers were introduced to Mrs. Dubose, a traditional Maycomb lady with a two-sided personality. Near the start of the chapter, Mrs. Dubose was introduced as a rather harsh and vicious lady, an example of this is demonstrated through Mrs. Dubose comments towards Jem and Scouts attitude in the beginning of the chapter. However, as the chapter gradually develops, her weak inner nature is shown, an example of this is depicted when she…

The Yellow Wallpaper In the novelette, The Yellow Wallpaper, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writes a self-reflecting personal narrative that describes and criticizes the role of women in 1892. Women were treated like children and forced to focus on being a loving wife and keeping up appearances over all else, even physical or mental health. There are several implications that women are treated like children throughout the story. The narrator is put in a nursery with barred windows,…

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, author Charlotte Perkins Gilman provides an outlook on some of the hardships that women of the nineteenth century went through as a result of having nervous conditions, while Simone de Beauvoir’s, “Woman as Other”, supports Gillman’s perspective. The way society perceives a man showing affection towards a woman is a very subtle yet valid form of oppression. De Beauvoir’s argument regarding oppression and fixed gender roles support Gilman’s overarching claims…

Since the relationship between a mother and son does not exist in the “New World” and is the reason for why Linda is in the savage reservation she has extreme contempt for her son. John. The relationship is particularly strained and that is shown that way during a fit on drunken rage where “I’m not your mother. I won’t be your mother” (Huxley Brave 85) slips from Linda’s mouth. She has built up anger towards him because she is now deprived of the luxuries of the New World. Mothers have natural…

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wall Paper” uses stream of consciousness from a patient’s point of view to describe the effects of the ‘rest cure.’ The narrator’s description and opinion of each character provides the audience with a base to interpret them for themselves. Each character reinforces the normalized domestic beliefs of the 19th century to an extent. In this story, the narrator represents women during the 1880s, therefore her husband represents men and their…

Gender roles have historically been depicted as the man being the stronger sex while females are subservient and in charge of all of taking care of men and all of their needs. Odysseus’s wife Penelope in Homer’s The Odyssey and Hisham Matar’s mother, Fawzia Tarwah in his memoir The Return are pampered wives who have to step into larger roles when their husbands are suddenly no longer present in the household. The empowering strength that each of these women has to find within themselves is…

In the poem, “I cannot live with you”, by Emily Dickinson, the narrator expresses her love and despair for lover whom she cannot be with. The narrator suffers immensely because of her lover, hence why she cannot be with them in present time or in the afterlife. She is in great agony as living with her lover would be a disgrace to the world and to God. Forcing her to believe that the only way to actually live in this world is to live apart− loving each other from afar. Throughout the poem, Emily…

Mary Oliver reveals conjectures people make about other people and other cultures in her poem, “Singapore.” Oliver shares a woman’s experience in an airport bathroom. The speaker in the poem is inwardly conflicted, and her internal thoughts displayed throughout the poem alter. At first, the poem reveals the speaker’s thoughts towards a woman working as a custodian at the airport as degrading and poignant. The speaker judgmentally feels sorry for the woman and takes pity on her. The speaker’s…