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Miss Emily & The Yellow Wallpaper Comparison

William Faulkner & Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A comparison and contrast of FaulknerÆs Miss Emily and the narrator in Perkins GilmanÆs 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 GilmanÆs 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 ôfairö sex in all ways. This included being a lady, having oneÆs 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 ôinferiorö position compared to men living in a manÆs world.

A Rose for Miss Emily illustrates the story of Miss Emily Grierson, the last in a long line of that name, one of the townÆs ôaugustö names. Miss Emily symbolizes the past. She is a living monument to its way of life and the townspeople. She is the embodiment of an old, proud culture and since 1894 she has been viewed as a ôhereditary obligation.ö The time and the environment in which Miss Emily exist helps explain the relations...

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Miss Emily & The Yellow Wallpaper Comparison. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 22:01, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1711108.html