Monday, March 26, 2012

"The Revolt of Mother" & "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Each of these stories focus their attention upon women whose opinions are invalidated by their husbands.  In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's tale The Yellow Wallpaper, a woman is told how she must cure her nervous depression by her husband after he is the one who diagnoses her.  He is the one who makes the decision for where they will vacation to during this recovery period and even where exactly his wife will sleep once they arrive.  She is told to stay in a disheveled wallpapered-room which grows on her over time, eventually resulting in a complete mental breakdown and subsequent boost of willpower sufficient to challenge her husband's plans for her and assert her own.  While sane, the narrator adheres to the wishes of her husband and plays a docile, ignorant role in her own life, yet after a psychological breakdown, she values the wallpaper of her confined room over the wishes of her husband, and becomes independent, albeit insane.

In Mary. E Wilkin's tale The Revolt of Mother, a woman married forty-years to her husband confronts him over the importance of his life as a farmer outweighing his obligations as a married man.  His wife brings this up after he begins work on a lavish barn rather than a proper house to replace the meager one they've lived in since their marriage.  She says he values his animals more than his wife and children - a claim he seems unshaken by.  This woman's husband has not fulfilled his promise of a new house for forty-years and he has little interest in listening to her pleas now.  After the completion of the barn, he goes away on business and asks her to move new materials and animals he's ordered into the new barn when they arrive.  Rather than this, his wife chooses to reverse the roles of her current house and new barn, so she and her children move all their household items to the new structure.  Upon returning from his trip, the husband sees how important a new house is to his family, agrees with his wife's wishes and allows her this victory over his wishes.  This is different from The Yellow Wallpaper because his wife doesn't go insane during the process of doing something to please herself for once.  In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author draws back from society and her family and becomes a part of the wallpapered-nursery.  In The Revolt of Mother, the wife jumps out from her domesticated comfort-zone at home to create a new home in the newly constructed barn.  Both women get what they want, essentially, yet one curls up inside a single room and another moves everything she owns. It's all about relocation.

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