Miss Emily & The Yellow Wallpaper Comparison

A comparison and contrast of Faulkner's Miss Emily and the narrator in Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper reveals the often negative and diminishing impact on women of living in a male dominated society and culture.

Set against the backdrop of the turn-of-the-century South, A Rose for Emily is a story of isolation, loss, gossip, the conflict between old and new, and even possible murder. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is partly autobiographical and illustrates the fight for selfhood by a woman in an oppressed environment. Both of these female characters suffer from maintaining an image, role, and ideal that is imposed on them by men in highly patriarchal societies. However, the impact of such an environment manifests different challenges and behaviors in each. In the case of Miss Emily, she is from a proud, older era in the South where women were considered the "fair" sex in all ways. This included being a lady, having one's virtue and honor defended and defined by male relations, and a refusal to admit weakness or deficiency in public. Like the proud, stubborn house in which she resides, Miss Emily is a symbol and relic of a past way of life that has passed her and society by a long time ago. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is more of a feminist than Miss Emily could be, but she still suffers a nervous breakdown from the confining pressures of her "inferior" position compared to men

ible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain" that vanishes into her belt, (Faulkner 1934, 120). For Miss Emily time has vanished. We see this when she is confronted about her unpaid tax bill. She refers to a remission of taxes that occurred years earlier, and she refers to Colonel Sartoris, dead for over a decade. Miss Emily cannot accept the reality of the present, "'See Colonel SartorisàI have no taxes in Jefferson," (Faulkner 1934, 121). The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper also suffers from an inability to handle her reality. She cannot accept the reality of being controlled and confined by men. Perkins Gilman suffered from postpartum depression and was also treated to the infamous "rest cure" popular in the era that is prescribed for her narrator. While Miss Emily's name is something she cannot escape and something that has lost its value over time, the narrator in Wallpaper is nameless for good reason. She feels as if she has no identity or control over her life, damping her capacity for true expression of self. When she gets excited or hysterical about her confinement, the men around her only prescribe rest. They do not understand her confinement and lack of living is what causes her frustration. Once she is