Both ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘The Story of an Hour’ are stories that explore the inner psyche of women. However, they do so in very different ways.
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is a story that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it tells the story of a woman who is slowly going insane. The wallpaper in her room starts to drive her crazy, because she feels like it is watching her and following her around.
‘The Story of an Hour’ is a story that was written by Kate Chopin, and it tells the story of a woman who learns that her husband has died. She is initially sad, but then she realizes that she is now free. She can do whatever she wants and she does not have to answer to anyone.
Both stories are about women who are trapped, but ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is about a woman who is trapped by her own mind, while ‘The Story of an Hour’ is about a woman who is trapped by her marriage. In both stories, the women are ultimately freed, but only ‘The Story of an Hour’ has a happy ending.
Both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, are similar in that both of the women in the tales were dominated by their husbands, causing them to feel a tremendous desire for liberty. Both works were written from a feminist perspective as well. The ladies’ spouses had direct control over their lives in both stories.
The women in the stories were not able to make their own decisions and were not able to act on their own desires. In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, the woman is slowly going insane because of the wallpaper that her husband has put up in her room. The wallpaper is symbolic of the way that her husband controls her life. The woman is trapped behind the yellow wallpaper and she cannot escape.
In ‘The Story of an Hour’, Mrs. Mallard is told that her husband has died in a train accident. She feels a sense of freedom when she hears this news because it means that she is no longer controlled by her husband. She is able to make her own decisions and she can do what she wants with her life. However, this sense of freedom is short-lived because her husband comes back to life and she is once again under his control.
Both ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘The Story of an Hour’ are stories about women who were controlled by their husbands and longed for freedom. The women in the stories responded differently to their newfound freedom, but ultimately both women were controlled by their husbands and they were not truly free.
In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ the narrator’s husband controlled her both mentally and physically. He refuses to allow her to have any kind of mental or physical activity. She is effectively imprisoned in her bedroom, ostensibly so she may rest and recuperate her health. She is not permitted to work; she is simply supposed to write. She has no choice over where the room she must spend almost all of her time in is located or how it will look. Furthermore, visitors are strictly prohibited.
The narrator is cut off from the outside world and feels very isolated. In ‘The Story of an Hour’, on the other hand, the protagonist is not physically imprisoned. However, she is mentally enslaved by her marriage. Even though she loves her husband, she does not feel like she has any control over her own life. She feels like she is living in a prison of her own making. When her husband dies, she finally feels liberated and free.
The Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour are both stories about women who are oppressed by the men in their lives. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the woman is oppressed through physical means while in The Story of an Hour, the woman is oppressed through mental means. Although they are both oppressed, the woman in The Story of an Hour is able to experience a sort of liberation at the end of the story. This is not true for the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper.
In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ the narrator’s transformation was caused by her environment, and her response became from grief to joy. She was compelled to live in a horrible room with grim windows and detested wallpapering. She was practically imprisoned within the room in order for her to rest and recuperate.
At first, she loathed the space she was trapped in, particularly the wallpaper. However, toward the conclusion of the tale, she began to appreciate it and spent every waking minute gazing at it. She says: ‘You may see that I have something more to anticipate now.’
This change happened because she was finally given some freedom and autonomy in the form of being allowed to draw on the wallpaper. In ‘The Story of an Hour’; Mrs. Mallard’s change was more internal, and it happened much faster. She only spent about an hour alone after learning of her husband’s death, and she experienced a range of intense emotions in that time. She starts off feeling sad and distraught, but eventually moves on to feeling happy and relieved.
This change is notable because she was previously dependent on her husband for everything, both emotionally and financially. But now that he was gone, she was finally free to be herself. Mrs. Mallard says, ‘Free, free, free!’ near the end of the story. This sentiment is in direct contrast to the narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, who eventually became content with her imprisonment.
Both of these stories deal with women who are struggling under the weight of patriarchy. But, they handle this struggle in different ways. The narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ eventually succumbs to the constraints placed on her, while Mrs. Mallard actively fights against them. This is evident in their respective endings; the narrator is content whereas Mrs. Mallard dies after finally achieving freedom.
