Throughout history, women have been constrained by their corresponding society’s beliefs, and nurture that instruct or compel them to be who they are not necessarily meant to be. This issue has been limiting feminine freedom and failed to admire the humanistic approach to consider all individuals to be equally free, fenced with no boundaries. This essay is subjected to outline and compares three short stories that all together enforced the argument of feminine oppression that its causation is not only by men and women but the whole society as well. Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Jamaica Kincaid's “Girl” all revolve around the attempt to portray females trying to conform to the expectations of society, women who feel subordinated by an outside force which intensifies their desires to approach freedom. These desires lead the main characters of these stories to shift their tendency towards perceiving values differently and change in their character which will give a great twist to the plot of most of these short stories, which will intensify and enhance the main argument of these stories. These art pieces not only use literal language to convey the point of women's repression by society but also, use metaphorical and figurative language in order to enhance the focus of their arguments, that is the repression of women.
In all three stories, the main characters who are feminine feel oppressed somehow by various entities. To begin with, in ‘’the story of an Hour’’ by Kate Chopin it can be observed that the protagonist felt imprisoned by the concept of marriage. The story is about Mrs. Mallard whose heart condition is informed to the reader. Despite this heart condition, she is acknowledged gently by her sister, Josephine, about the death of her husband due to a ‘’railroad disaster’’. Although Mrs. Mallard’s initial reaction to this news is not surprising as the reader can see the generic flow of grief and sadness as the story progresses, the reader is marveled by Mr. Mallard’s emotional changes. When the main character, Mrs. Mallard, sits in front of her open window contemplating the death of her husband the narrator provides the readers with positive imageries such as “new spring life”, “delicious breadth of rain” and “ distant song” convey that life goes on and soon life will be meaningful for her even though she was worried that life could have been potentially long for her. When the narrator says 'There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know;' projects a new feeling is coming to her, just out of this grief process. Feeling that is possibly forbidden by the normalities surrounding her. The first time that she realizes the outcome of her husband’s death she is living for herself instead of living for him. This new thought by Mrs. Mallard is introduced to the reader when the narrator mentioned” But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.” Mrs. Mallard knows that her current emotions, perceptions, and thoughts are not considered acceptable by the principle of the society that she is living in. When the narrator describes it as “fearful”, Mrs. Mallard is filled with confusion about her sentiment, also uncertain if they are a “monstrous joy”. This “monstrous joy” implies that although she may cry if she sees her husband again and her love will never change for him at the same time she saw “ beyond the bitter moment” that she officially owns her own life now and totally belongs to her. The narrator calls Mrs. Mallard’s love pointless regarding her current feelings that now she is free. In this case, the reader can implicitly extract that she was not mentally free when she was married due to unknown reasons, now that her husband is dead she feels “free”, for the first time she realizes that she will now live for herself free of any repression even in delicate ways that are plausible in a relationship. Thus, it can be inferred that this” monstrous joy” appears when she is living out of the scope of someone else’s authority, especially a husband who can repress his wife a lot even though he loves her. What makes this short story surprising is the ending when Mrs. Mallard’s husband enters the house without the slightest sign that he was in a “railroad accident”, leading to the main character's death. Although the doctors assumed that the main character’s death was because of the joy that she saw her husband this is a dramatic irony which means that no one other than the narrator and the reader knows the actual causation. That is Mrs. Mallard realizing that she is not the “goddess of victory” anymore and all those emotional changes were pointless, resulting in a circular movement of the plot. The short story is introduced by Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition and at the end, the same problem is seen again leading to her death. Despite all this, the text is trying to persuade the reader how women are felt constrained and limited by their husbands. The battle between love and freedom appears in the subtext. In order to make the theme of the story apparent freedom outcompetes love. So that when Mrs. Mallard sees her husband again, her love is not strong enough to substitute for her feeling of freedom. Thus, she eventually dies after she knows her husband is alive and only the narrator and the reader know why; due to her loss of freedom. The protagonist’s heart problem can be a symbol for her feeling of repression and her death is a metaphor that portrays her losing freedom.
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The other short story that was mainly arguing women's repression and criticizing the constraint that women are facing in their life was the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The main theme of the story emphasizes the battle between self-expression and conformity which leads to the repression of the female character of the story. The story is a first-person narrative of a woman who is suffering from ‘’nervous depression’’. Because of this sickness, John, the narrator’s husband decides that she must remain inactive in her room. Since John is a respected physician and her husband, she has no choice other than to obey. From this, it can be inferred that the narrator conforms to society’s norms by accepting her role, with a bit of dissent. Obviously, she is not allowed to do any activities including writing as it is part of her treatment prescribed by her husband, John. John has informed her about the dangers of “imaginative power” and “habit of story-making” and how that can be unhealthy for her. but her desire for freedom to express herself is revealed in her own private journal. Moreover, When she informs the reader about her own intentions to convince John she goes to “make a visit to cousin Henry and Julia” but obviously she was not” able to go”. This illustrates how limited she is both because of her health condition and most of her husband. From the story, the reader can tell that she writes secretly by staying awake all night to have her own time. However, entirely throughout the trajectory of the story, it can be observed that her need and desire to express herself goes unmet. This leads to a shift in the character’s conscious mind and the narrator begins to see a confined woman behind the walls of the yellow wallpaper in her room and a woman who is creeping outside her window. This is apparent when the narrator begins to explain there is something in the wallpaper that “nobody knows”, her secret mind. She says, “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” This shows that as the story progresses the narrator is getting drawn more and more into her “imaginative power” that she is forbidden from by her husband. The woman she sees behind the wallpaper symbolizes her own situation and current feeling about her being repressed. For that reason, she goes on a mission with the wallpaper to remove all of it with the interest to free the women that she sees stuck in the wallpaper. After she removes the wallpaper, she does not wish to look out the window as she sees “creeping women”, and she is confused about whether those women saved themselves, and assumes they “came out of the wallpaper”.From this fact, it can be extracted that the author was attempting to convey to the reader how dangerous and unhealthy is for a woman who is forced to be conformed, and repressed by her condition, surroundings, and mainly her husband. That is the reason the main theme of this short story revolves around the repression of women. Confinement is seen in every aspect of “the yellow wallpaper” seen in the setting, throughout the secret journal, and the overall descent of the main character into someone delusional, mentally and physically trapped by her surroundings, prisoned by the walls of the estate by her husband’s directory and implicitly the society that limits women. The narrator introduces the setting of the story as “a colonial mansion”, “a hereditary state” and a “haunted house”. But what is more important than the physical setting of the story is another world, the shifting of the narrator’s mind’s consciousness. She knows that she is perceiving reality differently from everyone else. This becomes problematic when the reader gets dissenting opinions about what exactly happening to the narrator. The linear movement of this story is obvious when the perspective of both the narrator and the reader changes about the wallpaper. The wallpaper develops a type of symbolism throughout the progression of the story, it is the prison where women are trapped, and that prison is their corresponding society and husbands who repress them.
Not only feminine characteristics are repressed by society, culture, and men, but they can also be repressed by themselves and their own kind. This is apparent in the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. This short story focuses on the relationship between an elderly figure and a young girl. The story starts with instructions from a parent or guardian figure to a younger female. These instructions are about household duties, behavior, attitude, and activities of the younger female especially in front of men. For instance, soaking “salt fish overnight”, or” how to sweep a corner” etc. If the short story is analyzed, it can be observed that it is a one-long sentence. The instructions are presented with the big long flow of texts from the beginning to the end. Although this is unusual the author is using this technique to show her purpose to convey to the reader a massage and enhance the main argument of the short story, overwhelming the reader in the same way that the main character is overwhelmed by all of these long lists of instructions( the reader is in the same position of the girl), rules that come from this parent-type character. The main character of the story is getting burdened with more and more information that she must process, be responsible to change her behavior, and act in a certain way mostly based on the social norms in order to be the perfect form of a lady in the culture. That is why the style of the story directly relates to the theme of the story which again is the repression of women. Although the younger female did not have much dialogue in the short story, the reader can perceive the innocence of this young girl to some extent. For instance, when she is being instructed not to sing “benna” in “Sunday school” she automatically acknowledged to the older figure that she never sang “benna”. But the incessant instructive manner of the mother-type character continues throughout the whole short story. The young girl is being trained to get prepared for the life of a perfect lady that is idealized by society. This idealization can be seen in the motif of the short story. The motif of the story shows that the idealization of women in society is based on their ability how to cook, wash clothes and behave properly in front of men. For instance, the person who instructs is kept emphasizing the act of cooking a variety of foods such as “pumpkin fritters”, “bread pudding” etc., or her emphasis on how to wear clothes or how to wash them obviously revolves around the theme of the story around women repression and how this ideal representation of women in society confines females in every aspect and impose them to look like a certain image. The glorification of this perfect-looking women image who only cooks, sweeps etc., by society can cause this incessant yelling-type behaviour of this older character that cares about the young girl and attempts to impose the image of society on her. The fear of this older character appears when she tells “Not like the slut you are so bent on becoming” to the younger character in an emphasizing way. Thus this fear of looking like a “slut” and not good looking accusations by society is what drives this older figure to continue giving this long list of instruction to the girl. Thus society could be symbolized by this older-looking figure who is giving these instructions about how to be a perfect-looking girl.
To put it all together, these authors were seeking to persuade the readers of their artwork to have a better perception of the confinement of women by the voice of society. In these short stories, female characters have been repressed in a variety of ways. In “Story of an Hour” the main character has an epiphany which is the feeling of relief and freedom after she hears about the death of her husband before she sees her husband again and dies. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character is totally repressed by her husband who is a doctor; she is forbidden from doing a lot of activities, especially writing down her imagination on any piece of the notebook. In the end, the main character is drowned in the world of imagination and perceives the world differently; the author here uses the narrator’s imagination as a tool to portray the figurative language in order to enhance the short story’s main argument of women confinement. Lastly, the story of the “girl” provides the reader with a massive list of instructions about responsibilities a young girl has about doing her tasks such as cooking, washing, and how to behave properly so that she does not look like a “slut”; just a word that shelters fear in the eyes of individuals only because they are not the fan of society’s norms. For this reason, the commonalities of all these short stories have the spotlight on the oppression of women. To conclude, the authors of these stories have sent their message to individual readers and criticized the way women have been treated in both family and society and had an impact on resetting the mindset of both men and women about feminine characteristics.
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