Hour Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin

¶ … Hour

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin wrote their two separate short stories, "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Story of an Hour," within two years of each other in the 1890s. Because both of them were dealing with a similar theme, the control of women, there are a number of similarities in their plot, symbolism, characters, and other similar aspects of literature.

In the late 1800s, women had few choices in life. If they decided not to marry or could not find a husband, they had to live at home with their parents, teach, become a nanny or, in at worst, become a prostitute. In both the "Yellow Wallpaper" and "Story of an Hour," the women wanted to change their lives and the control their husbands had over them. At the end of each story, they do break away from society's restraints -- ironically, one through a mental breakdown and the other through death.

Both stories utilize a very similar plot, setting, and symbols to come to their unfortunate endings. Each of the women is described as a very sensitive character, as females were characterized during this era. In the story "Yellow Wallpaper," the female narrator's physician says that she has a "temporary nervous depression," which would have been called post-partum depression today. In "The Story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard is afflicted with heart trouble. However, these illnesses are not actually why these women are treated as they are. It is because wives and mothers had certain roles to perform and are to behave in specific ways dictated by their husbands and society in general.

Although the (no name) woman in "Yellow Wallpaper" is depressed, writing would have helped her considerably. Many times, people who suffer from depression feel better when they keep journals and are allowed to express themselves. Mrs. Mallard supposedly has a congenital heart problem, but her health problem goes deeper than this. It is caused by the heartache she feels by living in a controlling relationship.

In both stories, the setting is also nearly the same. The women are trapped in one room of a home and enclosed by the four walls and a window that teases them with hope of escape. The narrator in "Yellow Wallpaper" even becomes part of the room itself. At first, she feels something strange about the house and living there and foreshadows what is to come. Meanwhile, she only sees the outdoors through her windows. She says, "I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house." She is not only talking about the beauty around her house, but of the freedom she would have if on her own.

Mrs. Mallard, in "Story of an Hour," also sees the beauty of the outdoor world. Her hope is that she will be able to flee through that window and actually go out and "see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air." Similar to the narrator in "Yellow Wallpaper," the outdoors symbolizes freedom and escape from society's rules.

Other symbols, besides the house, windows and room, are similar between the two stories, as well. Where a window offers freedom and a hope to break free of confinement, a door symbolizes a means of keeping the outside world away. Ironically, both women actually begin to imprison themselves. The narrator locks the door to keep her husband out. Since she could not flee from the window and the outside world, she makes her room her haven. Likewise, Mrs. Mallard locks the door, so she can look out the window in peace and not be disturbed by those who have imprisoned her:

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. 'Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door -- you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.' 'Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

At the conclusion of each story, the characters' lives become even worse when the door opens and the outside societal pressures are let in. In "Yellow Wallpaper," the husband finds his wife having a total mental breakdown and becoming lost in the walls that enclose her. She is now controlled by the Yellow Wallpaper instead of the others in the household. In "Story of an Hour," the door likewise opens onto a negative occurrence. Mrs. Mallard sees her husband Brently, and she knows that her hopes for freedom are gone.