Comparing Women in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte...

Comparing Women in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman and The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck Talents and dreams, hopes and desires, shunned by the husbands and times of the women in The Chrysanthemums and The Yellow Wallpaper. The wife, Elisa, in the Chrysanthemums, reflects an internal struggle to find her place in a world of definite gender roles. The Yellow Wallpaper traces the treatment of a woman who descends from depression to madness in the male-imposed psychiatric confinement of her room. The mirror-like situations that hinder the protagonists in both stories call the women to conduct themselves in demeanors drastically different from one another. Elisa Allen of the Chrysanthemums and the narrator of the Yellow†¦show more content†¦Nevertheless, this ?cure? makes her weak; it transforms her into a woman gone mad. She gives into the figments of her imagination and begins to metamorphose this ?thing? she imagines behind the wallpaper as a hallucinogenic image of herself. This ?woman? becomes a deadly combination: best friend and worst enemy. She views the woman as trapped, and, in order to free herself from this non-fulfilling life, she must free the woman. Elisa also receives an uninvited guest, a tinker who she perceives as the perfect emblem of freedom. His life is on the road, in the wild-outside the fence. She, like the narrator, feels a need, a desire, to help this outsider in order to liberate ones self. Vivid pictures and visions of a life with no barriers, boundaries, or limitations, run free in the minds of both Elisa Allen and the narrator in ?The Yellow Wallpaper.? These women begin to view objects as both symbols of entrapment and of license. Within the confinements of her ?prison?, this once busy and bothersome pattern of the yellow wallpaper begins to straighten out. It becomes almost bar-like, and with the walls and the windows this ?soothing? room turns into a reformatory from which she must abscond. Elisa must also break free, decomp from the boundary, the fence, that is enclosing her in the stationary, non-progressive life. She sees hope, a way to expand, through her joy, her love, her talent crysanthemums. By sharing her love with others, she is actually leaving, goingShow MoreRelated Discussing the Chrysanthemums Essay1223 Words   |  5 PagesDiscussing the Chrysanthemums In studying the various schools of criticism and using them to decipher the inner workings of novels, short stories, and poems, it becomes apparent that they all share a common factor: a theme. The theme of a story is the general idea or insight, which is revealed by the entire story (Kennedy, 195). Although there are many themes that seem to be similar, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to find to stories with identical themes. Two stories with similar themes