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..and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard" (Roberts and Jacobs, 1998:550). This passage can be interpreted in two ways: seeing the woman within the wallpaper patterns may signify her dissociation from herself psychologically by succumbing to insanity. However, this process may also be construed as her way of breaking out of the prison that is her marriage, the oppression she felt being dominated by John and the limits that marriage had put on her as a woman. Though the Narrator ended up insane, she succeeded in overcoming her oppression; in fact, she gained the power to overcome her husband's control through insanity. Dissociating the married woman and wife that is the Narrator to become the insane individual she has become in "Yellow Wallpaper" was Gilman's radical resolution against male dominance and patriarchy.
Ibsen's play "A Doll's House" offered a similar portrayal of the female protagonist, Nora, with that of Gilman's female Narrator. However, Nora's interaction with her husband and society in general had been more explicit, illustrating how this oppression against her turned Nora into an individual...
After years of being financially dependent and subservient to Torvald's demands and needs, Nora finally chose to empower herself through metaphorical dissociation -- that is, detaching her married self from the woman in her and overcoming her oppression by separating from her husband.
In this pivotal moment in the play, Nora asserted to her husband, "...you neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to...I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile....I am no wife for you" (1715). This scene marked Nora's empowerment and accomplishment of the process of her dissociation, finally freed from the confines of her marriage and status as a married woman. Thus, like the Narrator in Gilman's story, this radical resolution paved the way for her to finally break Torvald's dominance over her as his wife and as a woman.
Works Cited
Jacobs, H. And E. Roberts. (1998). Literature: an introduction to reading and writing. NJ: Prentice Hall.
Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's Housemade him the father of modern literature. His writing showed tragedy and drama in a new and rather modern way. Prior to an analysis of the story at hand, it is only relevant that the plot and main characters are discussed in detail. This story does not revolve around a whole bunch of characters and is based on only a few days. The story
You see he does not believe I am sick!" (Gilman). In fact, there is a question as to whether the narrator drags her husband along with her in her journey into madness. Two feminist writers note, "At the moment when Gilman's narrator completes the identification with her double in the wallpaper, she experiences an epiphany. To John she exclaims, 'I've got out at last... In spite of you and Jane!'"
Alienation of Women in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Doll's House" Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henrik Ibsen's play "A Doll's House" share similar themes of women being alienated from the community and offer similar solutions to this problem. Nora and the narrator of the yellow wallpaper are both alienated because of the limited role that society places them in. This limited role based on their
Rank. "But, Nora darling, you're dancing as if your life depended on it!...This is sheer madness - stop, I tell you!...I'd never have believed it - you've forgotten everything I taught you" (Ibsen 204). Torvald must now take her in hand and re-teach the wild Italian dance, the tarantella. The choice of this particular dance by Ibsen is a stroke of genius as it aptly illustrates the nature of the
societal expectations play a part in "The Sorrowful Woman." The protagonist in Gail Godwin's short story "A Sorrowful Woman" demonstrates not only the ways in which people's lives can become compromised and limited by their attempts to meet the expectations of others but also the ways in which we each internalize those expectations. This is the real harm that limiting attitudes like racism and sexism have, as Godwin shows us: