Compare and contrast essay

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First Last ENC 1102 Professor Costa 03/03/2020

Comparison and Contrast Essay

Women in the Victorian era were often oppressed by men, bending to their every will

without giving it much thought themselves. This theme is expressed throughout the short stories

The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin, and The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Both stories were written by women who each used their platforms to write an allegory that

represented the oppression of all women. Although these two stories portray the same general

theme, they vary on their writing techniques to get their messages across to the reader. Both

stories use the elements of setting, imagery, and irony in different, and sometimes similar, ways

to convey the overall theme.

The majority of both stories take place in just a single room of a house, which eludes to

the idea that the time spent in that room determines if you will be able to overcome the

oppression or not. In “The Story of an Hour” when Mrs. Mallard was made aware of the sudden

and tragic death of her husband she broke into tears, but “when the storm of grief had spent itself

she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.” (Chopin, 179) Mrs.

Mallard does not reappear out of her room until the very end of the story when she has already

gone through her trial and change, having happily overcome her difficulties. Similarly, in “The

Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is having symptoms of an unknown illness and is prescribed by

her husband, who also happens to be a doctor, bed rest and isolation from people so that she

could get the rest that she needed. This conflict in the story caused it to take place majorly in the

narrator’s room due to them being confined and locked in there, solidified by the fact that the

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“windows are barred” (Gilman, 217). The narrator refuses to leave her room until the very end of

the story when she is absolutely forced to and has already gone through her trial and change, not

being as fortunate as Mrs. Mallard in the other story because she had gone completely insane

from her isolation in that room.

Another major element utilized by both authors is the use of imagery in both stories to

help solidify the changes that the characters were going through. In “The Story of an Hour” Mrs.

Mallard stares out of her window and describes everything in perfect detail, such as “The

delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The

notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows

were twittering in the caves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the

clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.” (Chopin, 179-

180) The use of this imagery suggests that this is the first time Mrs. Mallard is able to notice

these beautiful things because she is now free from her husband’s grip to do as she pleases

instead of always listening to him. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses her imagery to have

the very opposite effect on the narrator. The narrator immediately admits to the wallpaper being

the worst she has ever seen before greatly going into detail about the wallpaper, stating “It is dull

enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke

study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit

suicide-plunge off at outrages angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color

is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning

sunlight.” (Gilman, 217-218). Unlike the positive effect on Mrs. Mallard in “The Story of an

Hour”, the narrator was obviously very disgusted with the wallpaper and solidified that with the

extensive description and vulgar interpretations of the wallpaper.

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Irony was one of the biggest underlying elements of both stories, both authors taking full

advantage of it to help build their plot. In “The story of an Hour” the reader is informed that

“Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble.” (Chopin, 179) which is later eluded to being

false, she was just depressed from her current circumstances and was wrongly diagnosed by a

male doctor. The reader and characters are also made to believe her husband has died, which is

why she thought she was free, but at the very end of the story it is revealed that the husband was

still alive and this ironically shocks Mrs. Mallard to death. Everyone blamed her death on her

“weak heart” which is even more ironic because she didn’t have one, this drives the plot forward

because it gets the point across that she was misunderstood the whole time and everyone

including herself turned a blind eye to it. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses dramatic irony

to let the reader in on the narrator’s oppression, but the narrator herself is totally oblivious to it.

Throughout the whole story John is telling the narrator what she can and can’t do, but the

narrator keeps rationalizing his decisions, she solidifies this by saying “He is very careful and

loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.” (Gilman, 217). This use of dramatic

irony makes the reader sympathize for the narrator and her unwillingness to stand up for what

she wants because she thinks she is being taken care of.

The overall theme of both stories was the oppression of women by men in the Victorian

era, both of the stories achieving that goal through using elements of setting, imagery, and irony

to advance the plot and deepen the meaning of their stories. Although the stories themselves are

very different they do a very good job in using those three elements to get across the same moral

in the story.

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Bibliography

Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. Backpack Literature, X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, fifth

edition, 179-180, Pearson, 2016, University of Southern California.

Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. Backpack Literature, X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, fifth

edition, 217-218, Pearson, 2016, University of Southern California.