Marred and Married

The short stories The Story of an Hour and The Yellow Wallpaper are quite similar in that they illustrate the mental state of married women who feel oppressed and suppressed by their husbands. In Chopin's The Story of an Hour, the narrator is shocked to learn of the death of her husband in a railway accident. However, her shock is more from the odd feelings she has upon hearing the news. We are told Mrs. Mallard does not hear the story "as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance" (Chopin 1). In an odd manner, Mrs. Mallard experiences a sense of freedom and relief upon hearing the news. In Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator experiences the same freedom and sense of relief when she rebels against the dictates of her controlling physician husband. However, in both stories the women pay a heavy price for their freedom. Mrs. Mallard will drop dead upon discovering her husband is alive, while that narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper will succumb to madness after she peels the wallpaper off her bedroom walls and bars her husband from the room. The theme in both stories is that domination and oppression of the female soul by males is devastating in its impact.

Mrs. Mallard suffers from a heart ailment, so those that break the news of her husband's death do so with "great care" and as "gently as possible" (Chopin 1). This not only reinforces the allegedly "fragile" nature of wome

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Category: Literature - M