Yellow Wallpaper

Comparison and Contrast "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Rose for Emily" In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the relationship between an oppressive husband and his submissive wife pushes the protagonist from depression into insanity. "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is the story about a young woman who is overwhelmingly influenced by her father, and she begins to deteriorate mentally after his death. Both stories have many similarities and differences. The two stories are about how society can influence the decay of one's mental state. Both of these stories use a great deal of symbolism and imagery and have an ironic ending. The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper," who is named Jane, speaks of her depression and how it is casually dismissed by her husband and brother who are both physicians. Her depression really begins to accelerate after the birth of her child, so her husband decides to place their baby in the care of another until Jane recovers. Her husband takes her to an old house in the country and puts her in a room with dingy old yellow wallpaper that has begun to fall off the walls. Jane asks her husband to replace or remove the wallpaper, but he refuses. The yellow wallpaper begins to tak

The nursery at the house contains windows "barred for children," (page ) which can represent the suppression of Jane's motherly duties. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Jane rapidly progresses from a depressed mental state insanity. The story closes ends with Emily's death and funeral. " (page ) Jane begins to see a woman's figure in the wallpaper. However, the death of her father leaves Emily very lonely and disturbed. Emily's dwindling mental state comes to an end when she dies and the townspeople to go into her once beautiful but now dilapidated home, where they make the gruesome discovery they imagined all along. The town begins to see the house as an "eyesore among eyesores" and sees Emily as a "fallen monument. She begins to see "a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. The townspeople do not want to accept that she is in an awful mental state, and they reject any negative thoughts toward her. Throughout the story, it is obvious that Jane is regressing, instead of improving, but John chooses to ignore that fact and continue "treatment" in the same manner. Emily continues to present and assert herself as an affluent member of society by refusing to pay her taxes. The Grierson house is at first described as "white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies. Jane's writing actually is probably what keeps her from going insane sooner. The town goes into the Grierson house to help out.