Women in "Hills like White Elephants" and "The Yellow Wallpaper"

In comparison with Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, both female’s thoughts and feelings are oppressed under the demanding obedience of the male. With this being the case, can the women in both stories honestly believe their truly happy with whom they want to spend their lives with? In these two short stories, the females are both being portrayed as characters that capitulate to the demands of their male-orientated significant others, causing the distressing departure of the connection between these relationships.

The setting of the two stories, is similar in that it presents the gradual sequences of the plot, and the deterioration of the couple's relationship. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the setting represents a junction in the relationship between the couple: “The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this

The narrator (jane) suffers depression from the birth of her baby. Her husband (john) did not let her do anything but lay in bed and rest. She wanted to go down stairs but John did not let her. John tried to figure out what was wrong with her and told her that she had hysteria then gave her a prescription that has her rest the whole day but after a while she got tired of just laying bed bed not doing anything. The narrator was talking about the yellow wallpaper the whole time. She starts to see a woman inside her yellow wallpaper she thinks the woman is struggling to break free. Jane tears down the wall paper to free the woman jane’s husband comes to take her home, but faints when she realizes that she has gone mad.

While "The Story of an Hour" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" are similar in the aspects of fixed gender roles, Hemingway contrasts their theme in "Hills Like White Elephants". In "The Story of an Hour" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" they express a male dominated society and passive oriented women.

She begins to fixate on the yellow wallpaper that coats the walls of their room. She hates this wallpaper, specifically stating, “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Gilman, 1892). However, over time she slowly begins to see herself in the wallpaper. She is living a life where she feels trapped; something is wrong with her and every time she tries to talk to her husband about it he tells her it is all in her head. She wants to get out, she wants to feel better, but her thoughts begin to take her into a deep downward spiral. She believes she is the one stuck behind the wallpaper and that those around her put her back in every night, “I’ve got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman, 1892). Her husband faints because at last he finally sees just how sick his wife really is (Gilman,

Furthermore it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to discern what the truth actually is because as the story progresses it becomes apparent that the narrator is an unreliable one. Throughout the story one of the biggest causes for the woman’s frustration and unease is the yellow wallpaper in her room. She becomes obsessed with the wallpaper and slowly allows it to drive her closer to insanity because of other people’s reluctance to acknowledge her opinions and mental illness. At the beginning the young woman simply harbours a strong dislike for the wallpaper as shown by her portrayal of it when she first sees it. The young woman describes it as being “repellant, almost revolting”(649) and mentions that she “never saw a worse paper in [her] life” (648). However, after a while, the young woman begins to refer to the wallpaper as almost a living, breathing entity and allows it to consume her thoughts without ever letting her husband know what is happening. This disturbing behaviour is evident once she begins to see shapes and eyes moving about inside the paper “up and down and sideways” (650) and feels as though she cannot escape because “those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere” (650). Finally it all becomes too much for the woman to handle and she begins to experience full fledged hallucinations. “The front pattern

The condition unravels and she gets worse. The narrator starts to become obsessed yellow wallpaper which comes to life when a formless figure appears on her wall who is trying to break out. The narrator keeps a journal to document her daily life but only when her husband and sister law are not a home. She values her time to look out the window and maybe escape. She sleeps very little due to the figure on the wallpaper.

The woman’s obsession over the wallpaper and imprisonment in the room causes her to lose her mind. She creeps around her room and right over her fainted husband in her madness. The woman and her oppressive husband’s relationship is that of prisoner and warden. The yellow wallpaper harbors the narrator’s state of mind. This short story dwells in the grotesque nature.

She sits in her room looking around and surrounded by, “this wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then”(6). She feels tortured being put in this four sides room with the hideous wallpaper. The narrator is trying to get well so her husband John will not send her to Weir Mitchell in the fall. Seems like the yellow wallpaper is keeping her from getting well. At night the narrator seems to study the yellow wallpaper she mentions, “ there is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody has seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes(10). As the narrator is to do nothing else but look at her four wall room and look at the hideous wallpaper she beings to fix on the paper she begin to notice she saw shadows drawing her more attention into the wallpaper. She became obsessed with the wallpaper and she is still losing her mind at the moment. The narrator says, “I don't want to leave until I have found out it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough”(11).

The romantic literature of the early 19th century contained a certain symbolism for the corruption of woman’s values and place in society. Ernest Hemingway, author of “Hills Like White Elephants,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author “The Yellow Wallpaper,” wrote stories in an era where the vulnerability of women was amplified and taken advantage by the household male. Both authors wrote of women who experienced women suffrage before a feminist movement began, forcing them to live in a gender critic world. Not only do Hemingway and Perkins Gilman write of gender criticism but they also write in a manner that allows you to presume what the conclusion will be. Seemingly alike in plenty ways, Perkins Gilman ultimately provides an ending while Gilman leaves us on a cliffhanger.

As her isolation proceeds, she becomes terrified by the room, especially the wallpaper. She starts to describe it in a disturbing fashion. She claims that it commits “every artistic sin.” (Gilman, 381) When reporting on the progression of the pattern, her words use morbid imagery, “…they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” (Gilman, 381) She later becomes obsessed and terrified by the woman she sees hiding behind the pattern of the wallpaper. The woman in the wallpaper is her reoccurring nightmare that will never leave. What would seem to be a pleasant mundane setting is suddenly transformed into an abhorrent and distressing situation. She requests that he allow her to move to another room, but he declines. She writes about her request for him to get rid of her torments, “At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give away to such fancies.” (Gilman, 382) John provides false hope that the horror she lives in will soon be resolved. As time goes on, her hope for this renovation of the yellow wallpaper dissipates into nothing. Her terror increases just as her loneliness. Everlastingly so, the nighttime is the worst. As the moon rises, so do the bars which contain the woman hiding in the wallpaper. This woman comes to haunt the patient and fill her veins with unrelenting

Her original idea was that she could get a scary house to stay in for the summer. Little did she know her husband John had a different agenda. Her stress disorder skews her views but all at the same time she is still very sharp. Obviously, she was smart enough to write and know when she could do it and not be seen. When she moves into the house, John orders her to be on bed rest. Because she is a bit delusional she thinks that the room she is kept in is just an old nursery or gymnasium. The room is very large with a lot of windows. But, the thing that bothers her the most is the yellow wallpaper that she describes as an “artistic sin” (Gilman 381). Her husband is too worried about his own reputation to really help her. Throughout the story the reader can see that the narrator wants to be a strong independent woman. But, in the time that the story took place that was not okay with

They just got a summer home and she wonders how they will afford it. The woman suffers from a “nervous depression” which was diagnosed by her husband. Her husband’s constantly belittles her illness, thoughts, and concerns. The woman thinks that being active, and having interesting work will help her illness. This is why she wants to work on the house and write. However, the treatment her husband gave her was to do nothing; so she sneaks up to the attic to write. She writes and fixates on the wallpaper, which she finds revolting. Throughout the story John fixates and tries to “treat” his wife’s illness, while the wife fixates and fantasizes at the wallpaper. She imagines a nursery and having a child. After a while she begin to see women creeping around the wallpaper, so she tried to get rid of them. She begins destroying the wallpaper, and not long after she thinks that she stuck in it too. She tries to escape herself, then John breaks through the locked door and

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story of a young woman who suffers from a nervous and mental breakdown. Her husband John, who is also her doctor, is the most troubling aspect in her life; for he is in control of the narrator’s life and body. John belittles the narrator’s condition countless times and prohibits her from writing, working, and seeing her family members. She is kept imprisoned in every aspect of her life, but mostly in her marriage and in her house. The narrator is confined in a nursery with barred windows and yellow wallpaper in a mansion that she describes as a “haunted house” (Gilman 111). With little to do and no one to talk to, the narrator blankly stares at the yellow wallpaper day after day; She confides in no one but dead sheets of paper. Throughout the story, the narrator is unhappy and states over and over again how she wants to leave, so why doesn’t she? The frightening and obscure answer is that John is not really her husband. John is her abductor.

Since the beginning of time women have been considered the inferior sex. Woman have been stereotyped as housewives and mothers. Woman today don’t suffer the injustices that the generations of woman before us have. Today we are equals, working alongside men. We are no longer trapped in the house cooking, cleaning and tending to the children. The female main characters in both the Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour both feel trapped and controlled, but deal with deal with their situations and obtained their freedom very differently.