The Story of an Hour and the Yellow Wallpaper

Maria Geromo

Daniel Kelley

ENGL 1020

15 February 2017

        Marriage is dominant in many young girls’ minds.  They have what seems to be the perfect marriage made up, but they do not ponder on how suffocating a marriage can feel.  In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard, who has a heart condition, receives false news of her husband’s death.  She mourns, at first, then the realization of her freedom approaches her.  She feels liberated until she finds out he is very much alive, and she dies of a heart attack.  In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” an unnamed narrator, later identified as Jane, suffers from postpartum depression and is prescribed the “rest cure” by her physician husband, which ultimately makes her go crazy.  These two stories demonstrate the struggles that can come with the institution of marriage, the role of identity, and the long for independence.  

        The lack of empathy Mrs. Mallard feels about her husband’s death indicates she is in an unhappy marriage.  Though it was unhappy, it was a typical 19th century middle class marriage, where men have the presiding role in society.  She describes her husband’s control over her as a “powerful will bending her.” (Chopin 57).  She knows her husband loves her.  “And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not.” (Chopin 58).  Therefore, feelings were there, but it was not always love.  Likewise, Jane and her husband, John, lack the element of understanding in their marriage.  John is a know-it-all physician who believes he knows what is best for her condition, which he misdiagnoses for temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency.  The presumption of his own superiority leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of helping her.  “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.” (Gilman 751).  He does not understand that the “rest cure” is far from what she needs and fails to hear her out.  The gender division Mrs. Mallard and Jane are faced with reveals the effects of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance which can result in an unhappy marriage.  

        The entrapment Mrs. Mallard feels from her marriage results in a desire for freedom and a desire to find herself.  Hints of springtime are present throughout the story.  “. . . the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain. . . and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.”  (Chopin 57).  They indicate the allusion of a new beginning. She says, “Free, free, free!” (Chopin 56).  “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin 58).  She is overwhelmed with a sly happiness that she is able to start living for herself.  “. . . a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.  And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.”  (Chopin 57).  

Similarly, Jane feels suffocated in her marriage and is forced to become completely passive.  John forbids her from writing and exercising her mind in any way.  She is deprived of even having her own thoughts.  He is fearful her “imaginative power and habit of story-making . . . is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies . . .” and tells her to use her self-control and “good sense” to rein it in.  (Gilman 749).  She is mentally and physically constrained but tries to make it seem as if she is winning the fight against her depression.  She is cooped up in a room upstairs with a yellow wallpaper she describes as “almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow . . .”  (Gilman 747).  Her cruel treatment leads her to obsess over the wallpaper.