Delusional Women in the Literature of Faulkner and Gilman

Men of the late nineteenth century had an oppressive nature towards women. Literature was a great escape from this reality for women and authors of both genders have provided pertinent readings. The short stories A Rose for Emily, by Faulkner and The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman portray how oppression leading to isolation damaged their women protagonists.

Each woman in the story, Emily in A Rose for Emily and the journal writer in The Yellow Wallpaper, suffered a horrible depression from the isolation they endured. This depression is evident, yet not recognized by those close them. Emily is constantly under scrutiny from the town's gossip with remarks such as, "we did not say she was crazy then", referring to her refusal of her father's death. In the Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist says "he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do," about her husband who clearly neglected signs of her depression. Both women were left isolated to deal with their problems on their own.

Major causes of the depression of each woman were the men in their lives. For Emily it was her father who sheltered her. The narrator of the story remembers, "all the young men her father had driven away." Emily, who never married, suffered from this only to poison her only lover, Homer Barron, and leave his rotting body in her bed so he may never leave her. Emily's father was regarded as a dominating man, as the narrator tells of a tableau visualized by the town, "her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her," symbolizing his oppressive nature. For the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper it was her husband, who was also her physician; a dangerous combination. The husband John locked her up in a decrepit room telling her she was not sick but suffered from "a slight hysterical tendency", leaving her to hallucinate visions of a tortured woman stuck behind the patterns of the room's horrid yellow wallpaper. The hallucinations are quite literal symbolisms of her oppression in trying to escape the daily patterns set by her husband.

"She would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people do," is a quote from A Rose for Emily that applies to both stories. Emily clung to her father refusing to believe his death by staying in the house that he raised her in, only to wither away from the oppression that robbed her. The protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper clung to her husband naively saying "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so". She clings to and fears him at the same time, like a loyal pet fearing punishment. He has robbed her of her freedom, leaving her cooped up and psychologically depleted.

Both stories symbolize men of society holding on to past convictions of women at a time when the world started to undergo massive changes. The women were the victims, driven to delusions as a result of how the men in their lives treated them.