Theme Of Marriage In The Yellow Wallpaper And The Story Of An Hour

In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined bride as “a woman with fine prospect of happiness behind her.” Similar to the quote, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin are two writers that focus on the theme of marriage in their short stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour,” respectively. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin believe that instead of a content marriage life, there is a subordination of women and an inherent oppression in general marriage. In their short stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin suggest that women are constantly being oppressed and denied freedom because of men. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman describes a nineteenth-century, middle class marriage with a clear distinction between the domestic roles of women and the active roles of men. In her work, Gilman uses symbolism to show the oppression of women in a marriage. The narrator, which is the wife, deduced that one of the rooms in the house once had been used as a nursery because “the windows (were) barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (148). The nursery can be seen as a symbol because it …show more content…
In the beginning of the story, Louise Mallard hears from Josephine and Richards the death of her husband, Brently Mallard. Louise “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (1). The weeping can be seen as symbol for her release from her marriage. Louise might be weeping in joy over the death of her husband because she is finally free from her marriage. Also in the story, it states that she was described as “a child who has cried itself to sleep (and) continues to sob in its dreams” (1). Chopin uses the weeping as a symbol here to show the amount of unhappiness she felt during her marriage, alluding to an oppressive