Charlotte Perkins Gilman\'s \"The Yellow

¶ … Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"

Oppression and understanding are at the heart of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." If the two women had known each other, they would have found that they much in common and, as a result, they might have been able to support each other through their difficult circumstances. Both women lived oppressive lives because they were living in the shadow of their husbands and families. Both women are suffering from depression that goes unrecognized and untreated, which leads to a deepening problem. While both women shared similar circumstances, each story results in very different outcomes, pointing to the very nature of humanity. What these women needed, more than anything, was a sense of understanding from at least one person in their lives. Instead, the ones that loved them were the ones they needed to overcome the most. These stories illustrate the strength and determination that can arise in the mire of depression.

Both women had to live in a society where the women were expected to be submissive. This is more pronounced in "The Yellow Wallpaper" with the narrator's illness. The author, in her essay regarding why she wrote the story, reflects upon this illness. As it turns out the story was the result of an attempt to stay sane. The author admits that the story was intended to "carry out the ideal" (Gilman). The husband in this story is as much responsible for his wife's deterioration as she is because he does not life a finger to actually help her. While he is a physician, he seems to sabotage her wellness by ignoring what she really needs to recover. He blames her depression on hysteria and prescribes her to a string of empty days in an empty room, admonishing her if she even attempts to do anything that might help her such as write. Similarly, Edna suffers with an oppressive husband. While he is content to let her do her own thing, she is not supportive of her and even chastises her on her ability as a mother. He humiliates her by asking, "If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?" (Chopin 7). Both characters are not allowed to be themselves. They cannot fulfill their true nature because they are surrounded by husbands (primarily) that tell them what they should or should not being doing according to the dictates of society.

Both women in these stories are dealing with mental illness, which is something that is simply before their time. The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is suffering more predominantly from her mental illness. However, it is unclear how much better she would be if she were allowed a little bit of freedom. Because of her imprisonment, she is left with nothing the random thoughts in her mind and the wallpaper on the wall. Her mental state deteriorates because she is left alone with no support whatsoever. With no help, her aversion to her child is emphasized. She sates that her child is "Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous" (Gilman 2). In a normal situation, the mother would want to bond with her child. Kate suffers from an "indescribable oppression" (Chopin 8) that fills "her whole being with anguish" (8) that can be traced back to her family and husband. Edna, too, had difficulty bonding with her children. While they were much older than the narrator's child in "The Yellow Wallpaper," Edna's children to not make her more maternal. She struggles with this and we can see that she does not cope with it very well.

For example, she does not feel much angst for leaving her children after moving to the pigeon house.

While she happy to see her children after being separated from them for a week, we do not gather a sense of longing or yearning to back in the home again. In fact, when Edna stands on the verge of suicide, her children do not appear as angels of hope but rather "antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days" (Chopin 151). Her family cannot pull her out of her depression because they are clearly a cause of it.