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Similarities And Differences Between The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour

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In this essay I will be comparing the two short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”. “The Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Chopin, is centered around a woman by the name Louise Mallard and her reaction after being informed of her husbands “death”, On the other hand “The Yellow Wallpaper” Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is about Jane, A young, newly married mother who at the time is undergoing care because of her depression. Although both essays have their similarities and differences I will be focusing mainly on the themes of Freedom, Isolation and Oppression. I will also be focusing on how the themes appear within both short stories and do a compare and contrast about the way the themes appear in the two short stories. …show more content…

The second type of freedom is “Freedom to”, it emerges after we achieve “Freedom from” society’s grip and not following society’s values but making our own. The third kind of freedom is “Freedom to be”. “Freedom to be” emerges when we are more conscious. We need to be the ones that move our own life’s not letting others do that for us. It’s not just about doing whatever we want but about having the freedom to be whom we were meant to be. We see the theme of freedom in “The Story of an Hour” after reading Louise Mallard’s reaction when her sister tells Louise of her husband’s tragic “death” we see that Mrs. Mallard’s was “possessed” by the concept of freedom. We really understand what is happening when she says under her breath: "free, free, free!”. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the theme of freedom corresponds with Jane feeling that she does not have any freedom in her life. Jane feels controlled by her environment and her husband because she couldn’t even pick the room she wanted to live in. We can infer she has no freedom because her husband decides everything for her and due to his strictness …show more content…

The Freudian Regression theory states that Psychological repression, “is the psychological attempt made by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses toward pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious”. Sigmund Freud believed that In order to face problems in life, the ego employs defense mechanisms. These mechanisms function unconsciously to keep away unpleasant feelings. Repression was the first defense mechanism that Freud discovered and is thought to be the most important. Repression is one of the unconscious mechanisms employed by the ego to avoid a disturbing thought from being conscious. Normally the thoughts that are repressed are those of guilt. Freud believed that repression could sometimes have two stages which had to do with the aspects of personality “ego” and “super ego” and the individual’s sense of “good” and “bad”. The first stage of Repression which is called “Primary Repression” is realizing and determining what is good and what is bad The Second stage of repression starts to take place when a person notices that acting on some desires could cause anxiety. Repression is seen in “The Story of an Hour” and in “The Yellow Wallpaper” in different ways. We can see that in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Jane is a depressed woman who can’t handle to be alone

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