Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essays (Examples)

Finding no recourse or way to express her true feelings and thoughts, the Narrator began reflecting on her oppression through the yellow wallpaper patterns on the walls of her room: "The front pattern does move -- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast...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…

Works Cited

Jacobs, H. And E. Roberts. (1998). Literature: an introduction to reading and writing. NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gilman was a social activist and herself experienced mental illness. These elements infuse her story "The Yellow Wallpaper" with greater meaning and urgency for Feminism and for plight of females then and now.

Gilman as social activist

Gilman advocates for woman. The woman owned by males and disallowed by husband, male physician, and brother from leaving the room becomes mad.

The woman is imprisoned -- locked in. Males stunt and kill her life. In the end she steps over them; Gilman is telling females to do so too.

Gilman's experience with mental illness and its treatment

Description of Gilman's experience

Elaboration of the haunting description of the wallpaper. Gilman's familiarity with the psychosis

E. Typical 19th century views/treatments of mental illness.

Description of contemporary treatment

b. Treatment of the character. It matched social beliefs and was created by males

Conclusion

How this knowledge enhances our understanding of the story and…

Sources

Bio.com Charlotte Perkins Gilman biography

 http://www.biography.com/people/charlotte-perkins-gilman-9311669 

Brainy Quote

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/charlottep402139.html#gXQCICbA9RaGTyI9.99  Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper

"e're leaving,' he hissed. "I'm taking you straight to the hospital." hen Susan rose shakily to her feet, uncontrollable diarrhea had stained her dress and dripped from the chair. hite with fury, Charles Hay took her by the arm and led her slowly from the hall." (Melville 134)

The work again intones an incredible journey through what a women sees a man thinking. The disconnectedness of Susan from her husband is so complete that her voice is only marginal in the work, but the message is clear in the literary expression of her secreted activities. The masculine is represented as the feminist idea of greater association with industry than home, to the peril of loving relationships. The writing demonstrates a character who is wholly disconnected from ethics in love and life, and in s sense is a demonized masculine archetype.

Conclusion:

Among these three works are three completely differing context…

Works Cited

Cavalcanti, Ildney. "Utopias of/f Language in Contemporary Feminist Literary Dystopias." Utopian Studies 11.2 (2000): 152.

Fludernik, Monika. The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London: Routledge, 1993.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) available online at  http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman/The_Yellow_Wallpaper/The_Yellow_Wallpaper_p1.html .

Herndl, Diane Price. Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

"I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time… I lie here on this great immovable bed -- it is nailed down, I believe -- and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion." She does not think of her child, and only occasionally of her husband. The wallpaper and the imaginary woman command her focus. Forced into a pointless existence, and denied the mobility and the intellectual excitement that make life meaningful, the woman's mind turns to other intellectual and imaginary pursuits, Gilman suggests.

Eventually, rather than describing herself as looking at the pattern of the wallpaper, Gilman's heroine disassociates and…

Works Cited

Bak, John S. "Escaping the jaundiced eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins

Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Studies in Short Fiction. Winter 1994.

Accessed from Find Articles October 6, 2010 at  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2455/is_n1_v31/ai_15356232/?tag=content;col1 

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Full e-text available from the University

Long before the term postpartum depression became part of the vernacular, Charlotte Perkins Gilman deftly and sensitively describes the complex condition in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The story describes the prevailing attitudes towards women and their narrowly defined roles in society. White, upper middle class women like the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” could not easily express discontent with their position as wife and mother. The narrator’s husband—a physician—believes there is “nothing the matter” with his wife except “temporary nervous depression” and “a slight hysterical tendency,” (Gilman 648). Noting her brother is also a physician, the narrator exclaims, “But what is one to do,” when one is just a woman, and therefore a subordinate whose total financial and social dependency on their male counterparts precludes their self-determination (Gilman 649). To address her “hysteria,” the narrator’s husband and brother confine her to a pleasant enough country home, but restrict…

monologue in Gilman's "The Yellow allpaper" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Both Charlotte Perkins Filman's "The Yellow allpaper" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontilado" involve copious amounts of monologue. Each of these tales is narrated by a single person whose viewpoints and opinions are issued directly to the reader, coloring the events of the plot accordingly. However, there are critical distinctions between both of these tales and in both of the monologues the narrator's employ. Gilman's story is narrated by a woman whose mental health slowly, inexorably unravels -- to her detriment, and that of those who purport to care for her. Poe's story is narrated by a man who is bent on exacting revenge upon another. Thus, despite the fact that there are monologues utilized in each short story, the principle difference between them is that the monologue of Gilman's narrator spirals at its conclusion…

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allen. The Cask of Amontillado.  http://xroads.virginia.edu  / 1846. Web.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman entitled "The Yellow Wallpaper." The best way to evaluate this essay is by identifying the various thematic elements prevalent in it. These include the waning sanity of the protagonist, the intransigence of her husband, and the subjection of women to the will of men that typified the lives of women at the time that this story was written. Such an evaluation will most likely end in a conclusion that Gilman was subtly protesting the noxious effect that men have on the lives of women, particularly husbands' own wives, as a salient social issue.

There are several passages in this work of literature in which it is clear that the author is suffering from some sort of mental illness -- or, perhaps more accurately, is recovering from one and is attempting to prevent a relapse. Part of her mental illness, the author alludes to, stems from her prowess…

References

Caruso, G. (2007). "Literary analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper." www.helium.com. Retrieved from  http://www.helium.com/items/536002-literary-analysis-the-yellow-wallpaper-by-charlotte-perkins-gilman 

Gilman, C. (2008). "The Yellow Wallpaper." Project Gutenberg. Retrieved from  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm 

Gilman, C. (2008). "Why I wrote the yellow wallpaper." www.charlotteperkinsgilman.com. Retrieved from  http://www.charlotteperkinsgilman.com/2008/04/why-i-wrote-yellow-wallpaper-charlotte.html

Domestic Prison

Gender oles and Marriage

The Domestic Prison: James Thurber's "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) and "The Story of an Hour" (1894) by Kate Chopin depict marriage as a prison for both men and women from which the main characters fantasize about escaping. Louise Mallard is similar to the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that they are literally imprisoned in a domestic world from which there is no escape but death or insanity. As in all of this early feminist fiction, the women characters are defined as 'sick', either physically or mentally, for even imaging a situation on which they might be free, for they are allowed no lives of their own. Louise Mallard was overjoyed when she heard that her husband was killed in an accident,…

REFERENCES

Allen, J.A. (2004) The Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Sexuality, Histories, Progressivism. University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Chopin, K. (1997). "The Story of an Hour" in A. Charters and S. Charters (eds). Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Boston: Bedford Books, pp. 158-159.

Davis, S. (1982). "Katherine Chopin." American Realists and Naturalists. D. Pizer and E.N. Harbert (eds). Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 12.

Gilman, C. (1997)."The Yellow Wallpaper" in A. Charters and S. Charters (eds). Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997, pp. 230-242.

Then after Homer disappeared, she gave china painting lessons until a new generation lost interest, and then "The front door closed...remained closed for good" (Faulkner pp). Emily's depression caused her to become a recluse.

All three female protagonists are so dominated by male authority figures that their loneliness leads to severe depression, which in turn leads to madness, then eventually acts of violence. None of the women have active control of their lives, however, each in their own way makes a desperate attempt to take action, to seek a type of redemption for the misery and humiliation they have endured by the male figures in their lives.

orks Cited

Curry, Renee R. "Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily.'" The Mississippi Quarterly. June 22, 1994. Retrieved July 28, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library eb site.

Faulkner, illiam. "A Rose for Emily." Retrieved July 28, 2005 at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html…

Works Cited

Curry, Renee R. "Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily.'" The Mississippi Quarterly. June 22, 1994. Retrieved July 28, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library Web site.

Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Retrieved July 28, 2005 at  http://xroads.virginia.edu /~drbr/wf_rose.html' target='_blank' REL='NOFOLLOW'>

Her physician husband, John, and those like him do "not believe" that she is "sick" or even, in her view, capable of understanding her sickness, so "what," she asks, "can one do?" (Hume).

How can one view this passage without seeing a total lack of communication in a marriage? The narrator even goes so far as to say, "It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so" (Perkins Gilman). From a purely logical standpoint, John's wisdom and the fact that he loves her so would seem to naturally suggest that he would be the most receptive person to listen to the narrator's discussions, but other things that the narrator says reveal John's patronizing attitude towards her. Instead of caring for her, John absolutely ignores the narrator's suggestions about what she thinks may help heal her. Dismissing her…

Works Cited

Golden, Catherine. "The Writing of 'The Yellow Wallpaper': A Double Palimpsest." Studies in American Fiction. 17.2 (Autumn 1989): 193-201. Rpt. In Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 201. Detroit: Gale, Literature Resource Center.

Deneau, Daniel P. "Chopin's The Story of an Hour." The Explicator. (Vol. 61). .4 (Summer 2003): p210. Literature Resource Center.

Managing madness in Gilman's "The yellow wall-paper"

Hume, Beverly A.

Yellow allpaper and Paul's Case: Emancipation of Mental Captivity

The two texts, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow allpaper and illa Cather's Paul's Case, portray the main characters with hysteria. Both cases are reactions to the pressures put on them by their families as well as the society. They seem to build mental barriers that cannot be brought down, so called safe heavens, escape from harsh realities and this puts them on a self-destruction course. The narrator in The Yellow allpaper is the main character, an upper middle class woman confined to domesticity and "women's role. The text reveals her inner struggles and from her eye, the reader is able to see her plight. Similarly in Paul's Case, the main character has personal issues that are products of the society he lives in. He is motherless, thin pale and dreamy adolescent who rebels from his conventional surroundings in Pittsburgh. The major…

Works Cited

Cather, Willa. Paul's Case . 1905.

Gilman, CP. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. New York: Dover Publications, 1892.

madness in two works, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and "A Wilderness Station" by Alice Munro. Specifically, it will discuss how the central characters exhibit some form of madness or refusal to live in reality. It will explore the madness, and look at what role it plays in each story. Madness is at the heart of both these compelling short stories, and why the characters go mad is quite important to the ultimate understanding of both of them. They react to their situations by retreating into madness, which seems to be the only avenue open to their survival.

Both of these women use madness as a vehicle of escape from their real lives, and both of these characters suffer at the hands of others, which helps contribute to their madness. In "The Yellow Wall-Paper," the narrator's husband does not understand her or her illness at all, and he…

References

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings. Ed. Glynis Carr. Fall 1999. 9 March 2004. http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/CPG/TYW.html

Munro, Alice. "A Wilderness Station." The New Yorker. 27 April 1992: 35-51.

Rose for Emily," which was authored by William Faulkner in 1930 and "The Yellow Wallpaper," that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, both are intimate stories about women living in their particular times in the United States. In addition, both provide true insights into what it was like as a female living during these historic times. However, the styles of the two authors make the stories very different in their approach and effect on the readers.

"A Rose for Emily," told in five separate sections, is rich with the descriptions, plot structures and mood that made Faulkner such a dynamic and memorable writer. After only a few lines into his artistic work, the reader is transposed into that period and place. For example, when reading the second paragraph, one can easily imagine the look and style of the house: "It was a big, squarish frame house that had…

Madness in Women

In most of the novels and the works in consideration we see the struggle for expression and the quest to overcome masculine oppression (on the part of the author) finds expression as a deteriorating mental state of the character.

Largely guided by their urge to break off from the shackles of the society and the pining for the freedom that has been sadly denied to them, women exhibit a kind of madness in their effort to restore the balance. This is fairly obvious from the many literary works created by women. These works invariably depict the quest for freedom and very often they end up as the lamenting tones of a deranged personality. In most of the novels and the works in consideration we see the struggle for expression and the quest to overcome masculine oppression (on the part of the author) is expressed as a deteriorating…

Setting of Two Turn of the Century Feminist Tales

The use of irony in both tales

Women today

Women's Role in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Story of an Hour"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short tale "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Katherine Anne Porter's short story "A Story of an Hour" both depict the constrained lives of middle-class women. The protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is driven mad when she is refused her books and the healthy aspects of her daily life as a rest cure, after the woman has given birth to her first child. The rest cure merely kindles the illness within her. In "A Story of an Hour," a woman with a bad heart is denied all of the aspects of life that make life worth living, such as travel and adventure, for fear the excitement will cause her to have a heart attack.

Ironically, the woman at the…

omen and Gender Studies

Of all the technologies and cultural phenomena human beings have created, language, and particularly writing, is arguably the most powerful, because it is the means by which all human experience is expressed and ordered. As such, controlling who is allowed to write, and in a modern context, be published, is one of the most effective means of controlling society. This fact was painfully clear to women writers throughout history because women were frequently prohibited from receiving the same education as men, and as the struggle for gender equality began to read a critical mass near the end of the nineteenth century, control over women's access to education and writing became a central theme in a number of authors' works, whether they considered themselves feminists or not. In particular, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 story The Yellow allpaper features this theme prominently, and Virginia oolf's extended essay A…

Works Cited

Bak, John S. "Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins

Gilmans "the Yellow Wallpaper." Studies in Short Fiction 31.1 (1994): 39-.

Carstens, Lisa. "Unbecoming Women: Sex Reversal in the Scientific Discourse on Female

Deviance in Britain, 1880-1920." Journal of the History of Sexuality 20.1 (2011):

Yellow Wallpaper": Sources of Narrator's Insanity

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about the sad descent into insanity of a woman that was first published in 1892. This essay speculates on the sources of the narrator's insanity.

The main source of the narrator's insanity is the restrictions imposed on women in a male-dominated society. This social condition of women was more pronounced in the late nineteenth century when the story was written and first published. In the story the narrator's life is so overwhelmingly dominated by male figures (her brother, and later her husband) that she is unable to make her own choices about her life and is kept imprisoned physically as well as mentally. In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator's husband is always deciding what is supposedly good for her, and she has reached a stage where she has lost confidence in her own…

As a housewife confined mostly at home, the woman yearned to develop herself, to function as an able individual not just in her home but in her society as well. Thus, work became a symbolic manifestation of the woman's yearning for freedom: freedom from the oppressive label of being a housewife, and freedom from being limited and dictated what she needs to do and not do.

Human ignorance is highlighted in the story when, as the woman succumbed to the fixating task of "analyzing" and following the patterns of the yellow wallpaper, her husband thought her nervous breakdown has finally escalated into insanity. As the woman begins to consider the pattern a reflection of her own life, her family, particularly her husband John, began considering her condition as one of insanity: "At night...and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!...I didn't realize for a long time what the thing…

Works Cited

Gilman, C.P. (1899). E-text of "The Yellow Wallpaper." Available at http://www.storybites.com/gilmanwallpaper.htm.

Marquez, G.G.E-text of "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." Available at  http://www.salvoblue.homestead.com/wings.html .

All of this shows how society looked at women at the time. They were "fragile" and emotionally irrational. They had no power or choice in a relationship, and they were seen as weak and unable to deal with the real world. This narrator may have mental problems, but it seems they came from the way she was treated by her husband and society. It was as if women did not exist. They could not work, many did not even care for their own children, and they had little to live for or strive for. Gilman wrote this story to raise the moral consciousness of readers, and to show the plight of women in Victorian times. The reader has to feel sorry for this narrator - not because she goes mad, but because she was driven to madness by the social and moral beliefs at the time. There is little social…

Moral Consciousness in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a disturbing look into the moral and social position of women at the time the author wrote it in 1899. The narrator slowly goes mad as the story progresses, and it is easy to see why. She is stuck away in the country while her husband is gone all day, and she has nothing to do and no interests to keep her occupied. A nanny is even raising her baby. She cannot visit others and her husband keeps her nearly a recluse because of her "delicate condition." In reality, she is a strong and vital woman who begins hallucinating because her life is so empty and she is so lonely. He has even convinced her she is sick, and then says he does not really believe it.

The female author wrote this story to show how women were treated in Victorian times. This woman wants to work and participate in her life, but the men around her convince her she is better off doing nothing. Her husband is so controlling that he even makes the decision where they will sleep, even after his wife tells him she does not like the yellow wallpaper in the room he chooses. All of this shows how society looked at women at the time. They were "fragile" and emotionally irrational. They had no power or choice in a relationship, and they were seen as weak and unable to deal with the real world. This narrator may have mental problems, but it seems they came from the way she was treated by her husband and society. It was as if women did not exist. They could not work, many did not even care for their own children, and they had little to live for or strive for. Gilman wrote this story to raise the moral consciousness of readers, and to show the plight of women in Victorian times. The reader has to feel sorry for this narrator - not because she goes mad, but because she was driven to madness by the social and moral beliefs at the time. There is little social justice here, because the husband will just believe he was right, and his wife was crazy. He will not see his own participation in the situation, or how he could rectify it by treating his wife as an equal.

Yellow Wall-Paper

The context of the work for Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper" was placed in a time that witnessed dramatic changes. During that period of change -- the early to the mid-nineteenth century, American women were identified in the society to be the moral and spiritual leaders of the home according to the domestic ideology. The primary role or duty of a woman was considered to be in her home where she would carry out the prescribed responsibilities of being a mother and a wife within the private domains of her home. On the other hand, men would be engaged with work, politics and economics in the public domain where women were not expected to participate. However, changes began to appear in this system and way of thinking during the middle of the century due to the rise in the concept of women's rights and women liberty.…

Teenagers in Conflict ith Their Environment

At the time of the stories

Teenagers are often in conflict with their environment. hat some call the "rebellious" years are at times just periods in a person's life where he or she may feel confused, lost, and alone. Three stories by Oates, Boyle, and Gilman highlight the lives of teenagers and their conflicts within their worlds. Each character will show how teenagers may act; the paths they choose along with the reasons.

HERE ARE YOU GOING, HERE HAVE YOU BEEN by Joyce Carol Oates is a novel that describes the life of a teenage girl named Connie. Connie is one of the main characters and the protagonist of the story. Oates paints her as a beautiful and self-absorbed 15-year-old who argues with her mom. Although her mother was once beautiful like Connie, she has aged. Her sister, older and more homely, provides a…

Works Cited

Boyle, T. Coraghessan. Greasy Lake & Other Stories. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1985. Print.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, and Peter Leigh. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999. Print.

Hilliard, Marisa E. et al. 'Disentangling The Roles Of Parental Monitoring And Family Conflict In Adolescents' Management Of Type 1 Diabetes.'. Health Psychology 32.4 (2013): 388-396. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

Marwick, Alice E., and Danah Boyd. 'The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, And Bullying In Networked Publics'. Papers.ssrn.com. N.p., 2011. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

This is why wars are fought with bloodletting, why torture takes place, and why neither violence nor war is limited to the physical carnage of the battlefield.

Nordstrom 59)

The early death of Clifton's mother, as a result of having to powerlessly rely on a liar and a letch who could not provide for his family, is the ultimate example of self-inflicted violence, as is Gillman's character resorting to an expression of madness to resist her powerlessness. It was only slightly more "appropriate" for a women to realize madness as it was for her to throw herself from a three story window.

orks Cited

Clifton, Lucille "forgiving my father" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St. Martin's, 2005, 314.

Gelfant, Blanche H., and Lawrence Graver, eds. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Gillman,…

Works Cited

Clifton, Lucille "forgiving my father" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St. Martin's, 2005, 314.

Gelfant, Blanche H., and Lawrence Graver, eds. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Gillman, Charlotte Perkins "The Yellow Wallpaper" in Schilb, John & Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter 3rd Edition. New York: Bedford, St. Martin's, 2005, 917-925.

Herndl, Diane Price. Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

John is completely blind to his wife's needs. In fact, he is being completely selfish in this situation because he is placing himself over his wife's needs. This fact, on top of everything else, allows us to see how easily oppression could transform into anger.

Oppression, repression, and rage emerge as important aspects of "The Yellow allpaper." The narrator in this story represents countless women who suffered at the hands of uninterested and uneducated doctors. The story follows the course of madness through stages and reveals the delicate workings of the human psyche. Survival is an instinctive characteristic and the narrator does what she can to preserve herself before going over the edge. Gilman demonstrates the yearning for independence in a rather hopeless situation and, as a result, emphasizes the need for understanding before medication. In addition, she also demonstrates how doctors do not always know best. Perhaps one of…

Works Cited

Perkins-Gilman Charlotte. "The Yellow Wall-paper." The Heath Anthology of American

Literature. Vol. II. Lexington D.C. Heath and Company. 1990.

-. "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" City University of New York Online. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html Site Accessed November 30, 2009.

Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look

In conclusion, these works all illustrate the changing role of women in 19th century society. At the beginning of the century, women's work was inside the home and raising a family. By the end of the century, Victorian women were attempting to add meaning and fulfillment to their lives. Women in this country were attempting to gain the right to vote, they were forming women's groups and societies, and women like Gilman, Chopin, Wollstonecraft Shelley, and others, were attempting to create their own writing careers, allowing them to be at least partially autonomous and independent. They write of women's struggles for equality and understanding with great knowledge, skill, and perception. They also write of the realities of being a woman in the 19th century. For the most part, women's lives were unfulfilled and controlled by the men around them.

eferences

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, and Other Stories. Ed. Knights, Pamela.…

References

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, and Other Stories. Ed. Knights, Pamela. Oxford: Oxford University, 2000.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings. Ed. Glynis Carr. Fall 1999. 9 May 2008. http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/CPG/TYW.html

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. George Parsons Lathrop (Riverside Edition), 12 vols. Boston, 1890.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus. New York: Collier Books, 1961.

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!'" (Delashmit, and Long 33). She has realized her freedom, but at a very heavy cost. Like Nora, she leaves behind a child and a husband in order to live in her private "mad" world. Some critics believe she is the result of a "sick" society that treats women so inhumanely they have few options but to desert their families or go mad (Herndl 114). Obviously, the cost to the women and the family is extremely high, and the obstacles they…

References

Delashmit, Margaret, and Charles Long. "Gilman's the Yellow Wallpaper." Explicator 50.1 (1991): 32-33.

Downs, Brian W. A Study of Six Plays by Ibsen. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1950.

Egan, Michael. Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1997.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." College of Staten Island: City University of New York. 2006. 17 Jan. 2007. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

Meanwhile, Melmotte introduces Marie into the matrimonial arena at an extravagant ball for which, in hope of favors that will come, he gains the patronage of several duchesses and other regal individuals. Marie, believed to be the heiress of millions, has many highly placed but poor young noblemen asking for her hand in marriage. She falls in love with Sir Felix Carbury, who is the most shady of them all. Felix's interest in Marie has nothing to do with love, but only with her wealth. This behavior is expected, since he is just following through on all that he has been told while growing up. He has learned his lessons well. His mother commends him often for winning Marie's heart, even if it is for the wrong reasons.. As Trollope writes:

It was now his business to marry an heiress. He was well aware that it was so, and was…

Books Cited

Austin, J. Pride and Prejudice. Retrieved August 25, 2007. Retrieved August 25, 2007. http://www.bookwolf.com/Free_Booknotes/Pride____Prejudice/pride____prejudice.html

Chopin, K. "Story of an Hour." Retrieved August 25, 2007.  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/ 

Eliot, G. Middlemarch. Retrieved August 25, 2007. http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/eliot/middle/

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Yellow Wallpaper" Retrieved August 25, 2007 http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

Gende in Poety / Liteatue Lesson

Lesson Duation

mins

Rational: This is an intoduction to the gende issues which wee so pevalent in the Victoian ea, and a backdop to show why they still exist today and the ham they can inflict.

Syllabus Outcome: This pat of the lesson helps meet outcome 1, o the ability to intepet meanings and themes within texts. By using abstact thinking pocesses, the students will make connections between the texts pesented and show how they ae, o ae not elated. Accoding to the eseach, "A student esponds to and composes inceasingly sophisticated and sustained texts fo undestanding, intepetation, citical analysis and pleasue" (Boad of Studies fo NSW 2003 p 32).

Syllabus Content: This will help meet outcome 4, whee "a student selects and uses languages foms and featues, and stuctues of texts accoding to diffeent puposes, audiences and contexts, and descibes and explains thei…

references to at least two of the texts read

Less than three sentences per response and mentioning one or none of the texts read so far

Lesson 5

Strong use of creativity. The poem or short story breaks three or more of the gender stereotypes learned

Simply rewriting a previously published story or poem. Only two or less gender stereotypes were broken by the female character

Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane details the life and experiences of Henry Fleming, who encounters great conflict between overcoming his fear of war and death and becoming a glorious fighter for his country in the battlefield. Published in the 19th century, Crane's novel evokes an idealist picture of nationalism, patriotism, and loyalty in America, especially in its war efforts. Fleming's character can be considered as the epitome of an individual who experiences internal conflict between following his heart or mind. Henry's mind tells him that he should give up fighting in the war because it only results to numerous deaths, wherein soldiers fighting for their country end up getting wounded, or worse, killed. However, eventually, as he was overcome with guilt over his cowardice and fear of death and war, Henry followed his mother's advice, following his heart. By being true to himself, he won and survived the…

The disparity in income of male vs. female heads of household is striking. Analysis of census data revealed that, in 1949, approximately thirty percent of households headed by white males were living in poverty, compared to just under thirteen percent a decade later. For women, more than half lived in poverty in 1949; by 1959, that figure declined to thirty-eight percent. The prosperity of the 1950s was not universally enjoyed. Female heads of household at the end of the decade were not better off than their male counterparts had been ten years earlier.

Financing for decent, inexpensive homes was readily available to servicemen returning from World War II. Coontz (1992) argued that this boom in home ownership led to "increasingly pervasive and sophisticated marketing [that] contributed to socially constructed perceptions of "need" and to unprecedented levels of consumer debt (Edwards, 2001). It was new consumer values that helped propel mothers…

References

Coontz, S. (2000). The way we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap. [Amazon

Kindle editions version.

Delmont, S. (1996). A woman's place in education. Great Britain: Avebury.

Edwards, M.E. (2001). Home ownership, affordability, and mothers' changing work and family roles. Social Science Quarterly, 82 (2), 369-383.

Fiction has the unique attribute of being able to be relatable to a person regardless of its implications to real life. No matter how bizarre a plot or character might be, it is the meaning behind everything that is obvious that makes the interpretation of stories unique and applicable to the human experience. This is greatly demonstrated in a collection of quotations from a variety of stories that all share one commonality: survival. No matter how tough things go, and no matter what life's circumstances can be, survival is the ultimate goal, and these stories all bring together that philosophy in a variety of ways, but all coming up with the same equal concept.

Nothing brings on this notion of survival more than Zora Neale Hurston does in her story "Sweat." Life is all about how hard one works in order to be able to excel and in order to…

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: Not that other people try to limit what we can accomplish in our lives but that we ourselves also begin to believe that we are not good enough to be, as Dickens so eloquently summarized it, the heroes of our own lives.

The story tells about a woman who has become so used to following the societally determined and enforced rules of conduct for a wife and a mother that she is no longer capable of living in an atmosphere…

They argued that women would not have any reforming effect on the country because they would vote with their husbands (opposite of what they argued earlier). In states where they already had the vote, they had made no difference. Finally, they argued that women didn't really want the vote, anyway. This last charge had some truth to it. Susan . Anthony observed that the apathy of most women about the vote was the biggest obstacle for the movement. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 said that women would get the vote when "women as a whole show any special interest in the matter" (Woloch 242).

Terborg-Penn (113) points out that between 1910 and 1920 middle-class black women became active in the cause. She states that black feminists could never overlook the issue of racism; for them, it wasn't just a matter of being women; their color was a major cause of…

Old Nurse's Story

Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" uses gothic imagery and Victorian themes to elucidate the role and status of women. Online critics claim the story is filled with themes of "male domination, females' sense of powerlessness due to this dominance, and the ambiguous results of women's struggle against males in the Victorian era," ("The Damning Effects of a Patriarchal Society in "The Old Nurse's Story" and "The Yellow allpaper"). Indeed, these three core elements are absolutely evident in this haunting tale about rediscovering personal identity via encounters with the past. The motif of haunting allows the past to return to the present in eerie ways. Relying on ghosts allows the author to present the suggestion that the past haunts the lives of all individuals, and that women have trouble extricating themselves from negative situations because of the constraints of dead social institutions and norms.

However, Hughes and…

Works Cited

"The Damning Effects of a Patriarchal Society in "The Old Nurse's Story" and "The Yellow Wallpaper." Retrieved online:  http://www.unc.edu/~hernande/comparecontrast.htm 

Gaskell, Elizabeth. "The Old Nurse's Story." Retrieved online:  http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EG-Nurse.html 

"Victorian Fin de Siecle." Retrieved online:  http://www.unc.edu/~slivey/gothic/

omen ith Authority in a Patriarchal orld

In the contemporary world, the cultural and literary spheres acknowledge female interests and activities. Females have overtly exerted their rights by demanding their due status in society, thereby being accepted as important societal members. But the scenario was vastly different about a hundred years ago. Females belonged at home, with the general society believing that raising children and taking care of domestic affairs sufficed as their emotional fulfillment. Between 1850 and 1900, societies were chiefly patriarchal and dependent women had to fight to enjoy equal social status. They were governed completely by a male-fashioned society, and had to be the image of the era's feminine ideal.[footnoteRef:1] In this paper, female authority within patriarchal societies will be addressed, with particular emphasis on the many restrictions when it came to them exerting power and what effective strategies they applied. [1: Pamela, Balanza. "The Role of…

Works Cited

Balanza, Pamela. "The Role of Women in the 19th and 20th Centuries." Aglaun. 2014. Web. 5 Dec. 2016.

Bobby, Chippy Susan. "Resisting Patriarchy-A Study of the Women in The God of Small Things." Language in India 12.10 (2012).

History World International. "Women in patriarchal societies." 1992. Web. 5 Dec. 2016.

Moghadam, Valentine M. "Patriarchy in transition: Women and the changing family in the Middle East." Journal of Comparative Family Studies (2004): 137-162.

Discrimination and Madness: Examining Motifs in the Short Stories of Faulkner and Gillman

"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gillman and "A ose for Emily," by William Faulkner, though remarkably different in style and voice, feature stories where women are the main characters. Both of these stories take the reader through a raucous trip through time and sanity leaving the reader constantly guessing. In the midst of these vivid journeys through the narrative, both short stories showcase their female protagonists in fictional worlds where various pertinent social issues fester in the background.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" tells a story written in the first person of a vivacious, imaginative woman who explains that she suffers from a temporary nervous depression colored by a bit of hysteria. Her husband, a doctor, who the narrator tells us is extremely practical, believes she is not sick and rents a colonial mansion for the summer so…

References

Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. 1930. In LitWeb the Norton Introduction to Literature Website. Retrieved from  http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/workshops/fiction/faulkner1.asp 

Gillman Perkins, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1891. In LitWeb the Norton

Introduction to Literature Website. Retrieved from  http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/workshops/fiction/gilman1.asp

Perkins gives us the reason one must never go back: sanity. These characters have issues in their lives but they certainly cannot sit still and wait for things to happen around them. The power of femininity did not advance because women remained timid; it gained momentum because women realized they were separate individuals capable of living full lives without the domineering presence of men. At the same time, they understood the importance of relationships and what they bring to life. They know both can exist without one overpowering the other. hile this does not sound like much of a revelation in today's world, it was a remarkable revelation around one hundred years ago when women were expected to be happy being mothers and wives.

orks Cited

Allen, Brooke. "The accomplishment of Edith harton." New Criterion, Sept 2001. Gale

Resource Database. Site Accessed April 13, 2011.

Chopin, Kate. "Regreat." American Literature…

Works Cited

Allen, Brooke. "The accomplishment of Edith Wharton." New Criterion, Sept 2001. Gale

Resource Database. Site Accessed April 13, 2011.

Chopin, Kate. "Regreat." American Literature Online. Site Accessed April 13, 2011.

 http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SS11.htmL

He is older, because he aches and can still feel the rung of the ladder in his foot, and the author gets all this across with the voice of the narrator in the poem.

Let America be America Again" angry, hopeful, forceful, strong, determined. The structure of this poem leads to the dramatic conclusion, and helps the reader see that this narrator is frustrated and angry over the "freedom" he has not seen in America, and how unfair life in America can be. The author uses different stanzas and varies the sizes of the stanzas to show power in the narrator's words, and how America can hope to be better someday, but it will take work. This is a strong poem with a structure that adds to its strength. The varied stanzas and rhymes make the poem just a little off center, just as the narrator's theme of lack of…

References

Frost, Robert. "After Apple-Picking." Making Literature Matter.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Making Literature Matter.

Hughes, Langston. "Let America be America Again." Making Literature Matter.

Yellow Wallpaper

The author of this report has been asked to review and write a reaction to the short story that has come to be known as The Yellow Wallpaper. The work is a short story that is about six thousand words in length. As with many short stories of this nature, the root goal and perspective that one can glean from the story really depends on how one chooses to look at it. One can take it literally word for word while others could see flavors of feminism and the like. The author of this paper will specifically look at the reliability of the narrator. Specifically, it will be assessed how reliable the narrator is. While the short story is ostensibly a first-hand account of the story to be told and thus should be reliable, there are obviously some feelings and perceptions that are colored by emotions and other…

References

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Gutenberg. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

American Social hought on Women's Rights

his paper compares and contrasts the arguments in favor of women's rights made by three pioneering American feminists: Judith Sargent Murray, Sarah Grimke, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. his analysis reveals the centrality of religious argumentation to the feminism of all three. Murray and Grimke were both converts to varieties of evangelical Protestantism who drew considerable intellectual and emotional nourishment from strands of Christianity, which encouraged, or at least did not discourage, their personal development. Unlike Murray and Grimke, however, Stanton did not convert to evangelicalism. Instead, she launched upon a secularizing trajectory that took her beyond Christianity to Comtean Positivism and rationalism. Unlike Murray and Grimke, moreover, she acknowledged the problems inherent in any attempt to square Christianity with feminism. However, she never rejected the Bible completely, and she is appropriately viewed with respect today as a pioneer of feminist biblical criticism. he paper…

This was a striking argument that made the development of female intellectual potential inseparable from the worship of God. But while this is certainly useful as an argument for elevating the standard of female education, it falls far short of a cry for female emancipation.

Religion's relationship to feminism is more thoroughly explored in Sarah Moore Grimke's more ambitious Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (1838). What had changed in the fifty years since Murray's entitled "On the Equality of the Sexes" was published was that the battle for the liberation of women's intellectual abilities appeared to have been won. By the 1830s, well-educated women existed. But the shift that was occurring at the time - precipitated by the antislavery movement - was toward the use of female abilities to intervene in debates of social importance. Like other feminist antislavery advocates, Sarah Grimke gained notoriety as an outspoken female advocate of the antislavery cause. In 1838, Grimke, who had converted to Quakerism around 1818 - apparently because it was compatible with her passionate commitment to antislavery (Lerner 8) - found herself vilified by the press and rebuked by the Congregationalist ministerial association of Massachusetts for her participation in an abolitionist lecture tour of New England in 1837-38.

What was controversial, however, was not so much her antipathy to slavery - although the Congregationalist clergy had long sought to stifle criticism of slavery - than the idea that a woman should dare to speak out publicly on a matter of such importance (Behnke 20; Lerner 19). Grimke responded to her critics by publishing a work, which forcefully defended her right to speak. Addressed to Mary S. Parker, president of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, Grimke's Letters dwelt at length on the Bible, which was the ultimately source of the conservative view that women were commanded by God to restrict their endeavors to the domestic sphere. Grimke shared Murray's conviction that the meaning of scripture had been 'perverted' in the interests of men. Almost everything that has been written about 'the sphere of woman,' she argued, 'has been the result of a misconception of the simple truths revealed in the Scriptures.' She cited, in particular, erroneous translations, and professed a low opinion of the 1611 King James Bible (221). In an examination of the creation narrative, she discerned no grounds to believe that God had created woman as an inferior creature. Both genders

Brainstorming

The idea that I am brainstorming is the idea of a bully who pushes his weight around and says cruel things at the drop of the hat. This will be the starting point. However, through the feedback from others and the isolation that is encountered as a result of the bullying, including a pivotal point that is the climax of the story, the bully will realize just how caustic and vile they are acting and will try to change for the better. The bully redeeming one's self is obviously not going to be automatic as people will be leery of the bully because of his prior actions and changing one's personality so completely and so quickly can be disorienting and it can take a lot of adjustment. The lesson topics is whether or why people trust others, why people bully others and how hard it can be to change…

The absence of religious lifestyle in the family is an emphasis to the centrality of religion in the life of adolescents and is brought out as the possible wedge that may be there between evil and good. Here, Arnold Fiend could be seen as the embodiment of the devil in his boots that looked odd giving an evil angle and a hidden identity giving him a satanic look. The continued presence of rock and roll music in the entire story also embodies the rebellion against the societal norms. This is from the fact that such music in the 1960s was used as a sign of liberty and freedom from societal dictates and rules. This was the rebellion that most adolescents like Connie got into hence predisposing themselves to dangers that cost them their lives.

eference

Little M., (2013). Popular Culture After World War II. etrieved April 18, 2012 from http://www.powayusd.com/teachers/lolps/American%20History/Standards/11_8/11.8.8%20Popular%20Culture%20After%20WW%20II.pdf

Reference

Little M., (2013). Popular Culture After World War II. Retrieved April 18, 2012 from  http://www.powayusd.com/teachers/lolps/American%20History/Standards/11_8/11.8.8%20Popular%20Culture%20After%20WW%20II.pdf

Updike's A&P

Sammy's Muses in Updike's "A&P"

John Updike's "A&P" tells the story of Sammy whose life is transformed after three girls visit the store where he is working and are humiliated by the store's manager. The A&P where Sammy works offers the readers insight into the quotidian life of middle-class suburbia, while on the other hand, the three girls, whom Sammy nicknames Queenie, Plaid, and Big Tall Goony-Goony, represent rebellion and allow Sammy to recognize and realize the freedom he longs for. In "A&P," Sammy's defense of the three girls is superficially both egalitarian and sexist and serves as an excuse to break free from suburban normalcy.

Queenie, Plaid, and Big Tall Goony serve as the impetus for Sammy's ruminations on suburbia, sexism, and capitalism and corporate culture. Sammy sees the girls as being a rebellion of suburbia. They do not appear to conform to society's expectations of dress…

Works Cited

Updike, John. "A&P." Web. 30 January 2013.

She is literally locked in the house and it becomes her "protector" of sorts. It is as real as a character because it is has a type of power over Louise. She can never leave it. After hearing the news of Brently, Louise runs up to her room and "would have no one follow her" (635). The room takes on a persona as it becomes the one thing with which Louise shares her secret of freedom. Here, she can relish in the thought of being free without worrying about the disapproval of others. Here, she can express the excitement she feels when she looks outside and considers freedom as something within her grasp. This is the only place that knows her true heart and it is the only place in which she has few minutes to taste the freedom she desires. The room envelops her and allows her to this…

Work Cited

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lauter,

Paul, ed. Lexington D.C. Heath and Company. 1990.

1080). Editha wants to turn George into someone just like herself, who shares her same passion, beliefs, and patriotism -- someone who wouldn't hesitate to go off to war. As Bellamy (1979) states, Editha's commitment to marry him is "contingent upon his enlistment" (p. 283). Unless George becomes like her, she intends to cut of her engagement to him, exhibiting power over the relationship and expressing and asserting her own ideals. Once George commits and enlists, he becomes someone Editha can idolize: "I've been thinking, and worshipping you….I've followed you every step from your old theories and opinions'" (p. 1085). In her letters she includes what "she imagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him" (p. 1086). What she imagines are the things she would want to hear about herself. George has become someone she would like to be.

After George's death in battle, his mother tells Editha directly…

For instance, Sylvy could have decided to go with the man and leave her rural life. She could have left the life of poverty and gone back to the city. Had she made this choice she knew that she would never have to worry about money again. However, having come from the city originally, she also knew the personal freedom that she would be giving up. She felt that if she went away with the guest, she could learn to serve, follow, and love him, "as a dog loves" (Jewett, a White Heron, Harper Series, p. 1646). This line summarizes the oppression of the urban woman in the late 1880s.

Jewett tells her readers much about her feelings about social class and the political position of women during her time. She portrays women as "followers" of men. She alludes to the position of women as "servants" of man. She compares…

References

McQuade, D., Atwan, R., Banta, M., Kaplan, J., Minter, D., Stepto, R., Tichi, C., & Vendler, H. (Eds.). (1999). The Harper single volume of American literature (3rd ed.).Sarah Orney Jewett, a White Heron, (pp. 1639-1646. New York: Longman.

"Tiempos Amargos" (Bitter Times), with its ironic lamentation on the passage of time, criticizes life under the exploitive Mexican president Porfirio Diaz:

These are no longer the times of Porfirio (D'az), when they cried for the master when they'd meet him, they'd shake his hand, and button his pants.

If one day the steward became angry with a worker it was because there was another one closer to the snaps of his pants.

If someone had pretty daughters he'd get a job as a night watchman, or else he'd land a good job, at least as a payroll clerk.

If someone had a pretty wife they didn't let him rest, they'd get them up very early to work just like the oxen.

El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez" tells the tale of a Mexican outlaw who refuses to give up, even when he is cornered at the very end:

And in…

Works Cited

Crane, Stephen. "The Open Boat." Scribner's Magazine 21 (May 1894): 728-740. Electronic

Text Center, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, VA. October 18, 2007  http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=CraOpen.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all 

El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez." Artsedge. Kennedy Center. October 18, 2007 artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/3742/3742_mexCor_cortezCor.pdf>

Tiempos Amargos." Artsedge. Kennedy Center. October 18, 2007

Humanities

Importance of the humanities in the professions:

A comparison of "Paul's Case," Muriel's Wedding and Andy Warhol's rendition of Marilyn Monroe

The modern concept of 'celebrity' is that anyone can be famous, provided that he or she embodies an ideal of glamour, using material trappings like clothing and possessions to show his or her 'specialness.' This is a common method of 'selling' a particular product in business.

The idea is paradoxical -- on one hand, celebrities are special, on the other hand the media suggests everyone can be a celebrity and 'famous for 15 minutes' if they buy the right item.

This can be seen in "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather, about a boy who feels as if he is above his classmates.

Paul desires to have a celebrity-like status, based upon his perceptions of himself as having innately refined tastes.

But this costs money, and Paul is unwilling…

References

Andy Warhol's Marilyn prints. Web Exhibits. Retrieved October 11, 2011 at  http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/marilyns.html 

Cather, Willa. Paul's case. Retrieved October 11, 2011 at  http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Cather/Pauls-Case.htm 

Muriel's Wedding. (1994). Directed by P.J. Hogan.

Saari, Rob. (1996). "Paul's case": A narcissistic personality disorder. Studies in Short

Mrs. Mallard's husband could have thought he was doing her a great kind kindness by "bending" her will to his. This quotation demonstrates the fact that even if Brent Mallard was on his best behavior, he still had a negative, oppressive effect upon his wife. With little legal recourse, Chopin is alluding to the fact that for many women, death -- of either the husband or the repressed woman -- is the only way out of such a situation.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Mallard, her weak heart was unable to sustain the shock of seeing her husband alive, after she had finally acclimated herself to the notion that she had finally been freed from his oppressive presence and will. She was strong enough to live with her husband's death, yet was not strong enough to live through the surprise of his continued life at the resumption of her former, oppressed state.…

References

Chopin, K. (1896). The Story of an Hour. Retrieved from  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/ 

Goldberg, S.B. (2007). "Women's Employment Rights." American Bar Association. Retrieved from  http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/perspectives_magazine/women_perspectives_WomensEmploymentRtsSummer07.authcheckdam.pdf 

Stanton, E.C. (1848). "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions." Report of the Woman's Rights Convention. Retrieved from http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html

Stanton, E.C., Anthony, S.B. (1992). The Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- Susan B. Anthony reader: correspondence, writings, speeches. Lebanon: Northeastern University Press.

Conflict Between Exterior and Interior Life

Kate Chopin's "The story of an Hour" offers a story behind a story. First it can be noted that this talks about Mr. And Mrs. Mallard. Mrs. Mallard received a news that her husband has just died. This prompted for a roller coaster of emotions to build inside her heart and mind.

First, she felt sadness. She was saddened by the fact that she is now alone and that her husband will no longer be with her. But the feeling of sadness did not stay for long in Mrs. Mallard's heart because she suddenly realized that she is now free. The death of her husband would mean that nobody will hurt her anymore. Because her husband is dead, nobody will discriminate her anymore. Nobody will make her feel that she is just a low or second class citizen. Nobody will prevent her from doing…

Reference:

Chopin, Kate. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969.

Yellow Wallpaper,' the nameless narrator is compelled by those that surround her to spend time in a colonial mansion in order to rest and get well. The opposite happens; we see her descend into madness in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of the main character in 'The Shining.' We are given the sense of a controlled environment, in which a narrator is placed by male figures representing authority and familiarity (doctors: her husband and brother) in a situation where she is condemned to stare at a wall. The response of her subconscious is embodied in the changes she perceives in the character of the wall.

She sees a yellow female woman trying to break free of the wall, which we interpret to represent the constrained parameters of her activity. She is a complete subordinate, dominated by men who possess professional accolades. Her attitudes mirror those we see in Ibsen…

Eastern influences are revealed in 'A Room of One's Own.' There Woolf expresses her concern for unity and balance between the male and female principles. She writes of "two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body" which "require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness." In each of us, she says, "two powers preside, one male, one female." According to Woolf, "The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating... Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind must be androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties."

Jean-Charles Seigneuret. Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs Vol. 1. Greenwood Press, 1988

Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, Sarah Stanbury. Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory; Columbia University Press, 1997