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Male Dominance in Both Books, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

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Male dominance is something that is showed in both stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily”. Both the women in these stories feel they can’t be complete without a dominant male role in their life or that it was forced upon them. However, they both find a way out of this over powering rule through insanity, as some people see it. In the time the stories were based and written, women were not supposed to be sophisticated or intelligent, and were over taken by their emotions. The men believed all that women were good for was housekeeping and taking care of children. In “the Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is over ruled by her physician of a husband who believes that isolation is the best cure for her post pardon depression. While…show more content…
Women were employed and had freedoms outside of the home, but a “professional” woman was extremely rare. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman writes that, that she is forbidden to work until she is well again. Gilman implies that she has a career, but later we learnt that career is writing. She speaks of it again as her husband John approaches and she states that she must quit so her husband does not find out. Even the simplest of things such as writing were frowned upon during the time, as it was an opportunity for women to express themselves in an outward way. Women were to be demure and more or less kept in such a way that they would not overshadow their husbands. There were women of that time that worked but again, this was based on the social classes. Women could be maids, nannies, caretakers, matrons or other jobs in the services industry. The male role was a position of dominance whose main priority was to establish wealth and support for his family. A typical male of that time didn’t want a woman who was a problem or showed poor judgment or ill health. This was evident in “The Yellow Wallpaper” as the husband, who was a prominent physician believed the best way to cure his wife was to hide her away from society. He believed that isolation was the only cure and since his wife was ill, she was not fit to be seen in public. The same mentality of a women not being fit in public can
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