Comparing The Awakening And The Yellow Wallpaper

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Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" offer various critiques on the historical placement of women in the late 19th century, shedding light on patriarchal oppression within marital relationships and its effects on women's mental well-being. Both works critique the long-established power dynamics within marital relationships, which privileges men at the expense of women's autonomy. In the 19th century, women were confined to the domestic sphere. They were expected to be wives and mothers, but nothing beyond that, which their meager opportunities reflected. This made them depend on their husbands for financial support and social status. To repay their husband's efforts, wives were …show more content…
She was no longer tied to her husband and to a society contrary to all her awakened self-held dear. She could start anew. Similarly, in "The Yellow Wallpaper," the narrator's confinement to her room worsens her mental illness, driving her to madness as she becomes increasingly obsessed with the wallpaper. Her husband dismisses her feelings. He even "[assured] friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter" (Gilman 648), and as both her husband and a physician, people listen to him over her. She has no one to rely on, to communicate earnestly with, or to get a second opinion from. Nobody realizes "what an effort it is to do what little [she is] able - to dress and entertain, and order things" (Gilman 649), so nobody supports her in a meaningful way. The people she trusted trivialized her health and left it entirely in the hands of her controlling husband, leaving her isolated. With her husband forbidding all means of stimuli and company, the narrator had nothing to focus on than her stagnant environment, in which she imagines a woman trying to break free from the yellow
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