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Devin S. Manley

Ms. O’Keefe

AP Literature

19 January 2020

The True Meaning Behind Centuries of Writings on Female Oppression

Death and birth, the basic cycle of life, seems to have been a prominent topic to write

about in the 19th and 20th centuries, with copious variations and perspectives on what life and

birth really meant for the people living in the time span of these centuries. For Emily Grierson of

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, death was an escape from a life of anguish and torture

that began from the moment she was born​—whether it be through watching those around her

pass away or through the death of herself. Meanwhile, for the narrator of “The Yellow

Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, birth and childhood meant much more for her mental

health than any could ever have assumed. One associates birth and life with happiness and

comfort—but when giving birth results in what could be postpartum depression and rapid

deterioration into a negative mindspace—birth soon becomes no more than a death sentence.

“A Rose for Emily” follows the life of Emily Grierson, a white woman whose father is

reputed to have provided the town with a surplus of money in a time of need during Colonel

Sartoris’ time working for the city, to which he had decided to grant Miss Emily tax exemption.

The short story begins with discussing Emily's funeral and how it is attended by everyone in

town.No one had stepped foot in her house for more than ten years prior to her death due to her

living in isolation. During her upbringing, Emily's father prevented her from socializing with

men, leaving her without having a husband even after he passed away. After her father's death,
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Emily became the friend of a lower-class Northerner named Homer Barron. It was rumored

throughout the city that they were engaged, but no one really came to a solid conclusion on the

topic. All of a sudden, Miss Emily decides to show up at a druggist and asks for arsenic, for

which she would not provide an explanation for why she needed it. Homer vanished soon after.

For the rest of Emily's life—over thirty years—she remained confined to the consolation her

house provided. After exploring Emily's house when she passed away, the townspeople discover

a man's skeleton in her bed, to which it is strongly implied to be Homer Barron's body and that

Miss Emily had murdered him to keep him from leaving her like every other man in her life had

done.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” also follows the life of a woman, although unnamed, and her

slow progression towards an adverse outcome. The short story begins with an explanation of a

glorious manor, a hereditary estate, that has not been tenanted in years. The narrator’s husband,

whose name is John, and the narrator's unnamed brother, are respected physicians. The narrator's

husband John diagnoses her behavior as “hysteria” and "temporary nervous depression,"

prescribing her the resting cure that the infamous Weir Mitchell had once made popular. John

prohibits the narrator from writing or having any type of social interaction outside of him and his

sister Jennie, also called Jane, and she cannot even stand to visit her baby. The narrator spends

all day sitting in bed, and she progressively begins to see a woman struggling to break free from

inside the room’s yellow wallpaper. As time goes on, her perception of reality strays further and

further from what actually going on. In a last ditch effort to release the woman, the narrator

begins to tear down the yellow wallpaper from the wall. When John finally gets inside the room,

he finds the narrator creeping around the room and faints on sight.
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Although the texts revolve around the lives of two female characters, the actual people

pulling the strings are the men in their lives. The men in these texts abide by the typical cultural

and hierarchical positions the 19th and 20th centuries had for men: pure dominance over women.

Women were viewed as property and as subservient to their husbands while being overruled by

other men in their families, such as their fathers and brothers. This behavior was normalized

during this era — and there is definitely no lack of sexism and toxic masculinity present in these

stories.

In “A Rose for Emily,” there is a clear example of male dominance coming into play that

is introduced near the beginning of the story. When Miss Emily’s father had passed away, the

neighborhood decided to visit and check on her wellness. Miss Emily greeted them with

resistance, insisting that her father was not dead at all for three whole days. The narrator

comments on this event, saying that:

“We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all

the young men her father had driven away, and we knew with nothing left, she would

have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner 3).

After years of abuse by her own father, Miss Emily finally lost the man who ruled her

life. She was then free to exist on her own terms, ruling her own life. Yet, she clung to the man

who had ruined her existence even after death because she had learned to live in a loop of pain

and suffering at his hands. This is a clear case of female suppression and confinement that goes

to show just how degraded women were during the 19th and 20th centuries.

A similar scenario of male dominance occurs in “The Yellow Wallpaper” that the readers

are also introduced to at the beginning of the story, paving the way for the plotline to progress.
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When the narrator arrives at the mansion, it is introduced that she was brought there in order to

have a fresh change of scenery so she may heal better from an ailment. However, her husband

doesn’t even believe that she is sick in any form, but only has a form of depression that he

believes to be curable. The narrator comments on the situation by saying:

“You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high

standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing

the matter with one but temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency --

what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says

the same thing” (Gilman 1).

The narrator does not believe she has any say in how she may be treated for her ailment,

going as far as to mention that there is nothing she can do when her husband and brother are both

high-ranking physicians. Her husband in particular has gone as far as to tell all her friends and

relatives that she just has temporary nervous depression and will be treated at his discretion. The

males in her life have taken the reign and she now must do all that they say she must in order to

feel better for an ailment that she does not even believe she actually has, but something that is

worse, further demonstrating the power men had over women during this era.

On the topic of masculinism and dehumanization, depreciative terms are utilized at

various points throughout "A Rose for Emily" to develop the notion that women are far less

educated and dignified as men are. A very clear instance of this language coming into play to

characterize females as inferior is present through the following reflection on Miss Emily and

Colonel Sartoris:
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"Miss Emily had been a... sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that

day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor --- he who fathered the edict that no Negro

woman should appear on the streets without an apron - remitted her taxes... Colonel

Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money

to the town... Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented

it, and only a woman could have believed it” (Faulkner 1).

A high ranking city official is enabling Miss Emily to not face the consequences of her

actions based on the notion that she is a woman with a powerful father. Her father is the true

person being respected here, and she herself is being viewed as gullible. The fact that she has

become "a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" symbolizes the level of incompetence

women were viewed to have during this era. Miss Emily is not given a pass for being a white

woman with power, she is given a pass because she is being developed as a white woman with a

powerful father who, now passed away, was viewed as noble in the Colonel's eyes. This

relationship dynamic of her being a powerful white woman only through her father's actions and

not because she herself being respected develops the concept of Miss Emily symbolizing what

men viewed culturally as female incompetence, the 'perfectly stereotypical woman' in their eyes,

and a clear example of sexist methodology.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” dehumanization is even more prevalent. The narrator spends

days locked away in isolation in a barred off room, leading her to be treated in a subhuman

manner. The narrator chooses to comment on the room she is locked away in, reflecting that:

“The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by

the slow-turning sunlight” (Gilman 2).

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Although seemingly trivial, this quote reveals how the narrator feels like she is being

treated like trash, which is what this description of the wallpaper resembles in high detail. The

description of the wallpaper also can fit the description of urine stained clothes or objects that

would be thrown away. The narrator is forced to stay isolated in a room that she believes

resembles human excrement and she finds to be disgusting, representing just how devalued she

feels to be staying in that room and how the males in her life dehumanized her though their

actions.

After being dehumanized for so long by her father and the men around her, Miss Emily

had been driven to the extreme and killed her newfound man Homer Barron to be with him

forever. This is why the narrator of “A Rose for Emily” states when her father first died that:

“We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all

the young men her father had driven away, and we knew with nothing left, she would

have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner 3).

At that moment in time, the neighborhood did not think that Miss Emily had any mental

illnesses, but this event seems to have placed the thought that she does have one in their minds.

A similar event occurred in “The Yellow Wallpaper” that seems to have been intended to make

the readers believe the narrator has been suffering from a delusional state of mind for quite some

time as a result of the isolation her husband put her through. At the end of the text the narrator

seems to have lost her touch with reality to the point where she perceives everyday events to be

supernatural. An occurrence of this is demonstrated when the narrator states:

“I don't like to look out of the windows even-- there are so many of those creeping

women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did”
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(Gilman 10).

This is physically impossible for a human to do. She is presented as delusional at this

point in the story and is actually seeing her reflection, interpreting it as a whole different person.

A repeated pattern of one’s mental state being altered by masculinism determining their

rationality is ever apparent by this point in both stories. One’s perspective on life being tied to

their level of sanity is developed and established through the progressive descent into a mental

state that induces irrationality and a warped perception of reality.

The portrayal of these women as having mental illnesses seems to be coincidental with

the fact that they both have men as the catalysts for their descent. However, there are far deeper

representations in these scenarios that what is scratched on the surface level. In both scenarios

presented, the women were developed as having mental illnesses that tie into the fact that they

stood up to the men in their lives. In “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily finally took back her life

from her abusive father through finding herself a boyfriend and not taking no for an answer,

which is what drove Miss Emily to kill Homer Barron so she may be with him forever. Her

attempt at standing up to men is what was presented as the factor that drove her to delusion. In

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator ends the oppression her husband inflicted upon her

through forcing her to stay in that isolated room and follow the “resting cure” by making a

feminist statement at the end of the story where she walks over his fainted body that she seemed

as “right across her path” (Gilman 11) so she may finally leave the room to which she was in

solitude for and which had driven her to what was deemed as insanity after so long. These mental

illnesses actually represent a cultural bias towards women that men had during the 19th and 20th

centuries who decided to stand up to men and become their own person, of which led to women
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being portrayed with such illnesses of the mind so to further suppress more women from taking

this initiative. 

The conveyance of women bound to men within the 19th and 20th centuries were written

to signify a deeper notion that women during these eras were sick of subservience; yet for

breaking that mold, were seen as having a sickness of the mind by the men of society,

dehumanizing females who attempted to establish their own identity outside of the influence of

men. These texts represent much more than the tortured lives many females endured during these

time eras ​— they represent years of females defending themselves from the men that attempted

to control their lives. These actions were viewed as unconventional by society, resulting in these

women being portrayed as having mental illnesses in texts to represent the poisoning of the

minds cultural normalities and old toxic philosophies on masculinity had on women. In a

symbolic twist of fate, the many women that were pained by the men in their lives had their

stories captured in the many writings of these time eras, painting a more holistic picture of how

cultural normalities and feminism has advanced in the times since.

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Works Cited

Faulkner, William. ​A Rose for Emily.​ The Forum, 30 April 1930.

Gilman, Charlotte P. ​The Yellow Wallpaper.​ New England Magazine, 1892.

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