Daisy Miller and The Yellow Wallpaper and Women Stereotypes
In the short stories Daisy Miller and the Yellow Wallpaper, there is one distinct and obvious theme; the degradation of the female gender. Society often places specific, stereotypical, and restrictive standards on the female sex. Although modern women have overcome unfair chauvinism and prejudice, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century was much different. Women were forced to deal with a culture in which gender equality was much less understood. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James voiced their opinions concerning gender inequalities themselves through fictional literature. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character is a woman who is mentally ill and basically imprisoned until she regains her normal mental state. As in Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”, the main character is a young American girl traveling in Europe who denies the classic female standards and simply constructs her own rules. In “the Yellow Wallpaper”, the entire story progresses never revealing the main character’s name. This in itself possibly alludes to the fact that the women of her era simply lacked their own personal identity. They were known simply as “the wife of Mr. Smith rather than their own separate entity . . .
John continually tells her that her illness is psychological, and encourages her to try and get more fresh air and sleep. The people around Daisy actually looked at this unfortunate incident as “what Daisy deserved” because of her apparent injustices to the local society. While most cases were not this extreme, this character was justified in creating a consciousness of such a severe situation. Great advancements have been made in the liberation of women everywhere. Unfortunately, only a short time later Daisy came down with a fever, and eventually passed away as a result of the illness. As the story progresses, Daisy’s reckless and flirtatious behavior became the gossip floating around town. The woman is behind the bars of the paper during the day, but at night she is free and creeps about the room. When she comments that there must be something odd about a house so large and beautiful, yet rented to them at such a reasonable price, she states; “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage” (Gilman 833). Daisy tried to cover for herself by saying, “I don’t want to do anything improper” (James 482). As time goes on, she begins to see a woman in the wallpaper. While most women of this time were in no way insane as a result of repression, many dealt with the inequality in other ways. In this case, her husband, John, treated her as a frail and incapable being, to which he laughed at her fears, and disregarded her concerns as meaningless worries. This eventually, however, led to her untimely demise.
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