Gender Dynamics in The Yellow Wallpaper and Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the idea of women being subordinate to men is prominent. The main female characters are berated for their alleged incompetence and are subject to repression of their true selves. However, when the men are subjected to similar conditions, they prove to be much weaker than stereotypes would suggest. In both stories, the authors depict the ironies of conventional society to show how despite men’s perceived strength, women are really the stronger sex. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman paints a picture of a woman, Jane, whose husband and doctor have told her that she is sick, and she needs to do nothing but rest. Right from the start, the reader gets a clear image of the societal hierarchy. At the beginning, Jane doesn’t think she is sick, just suffering from a slight case of depression after having her first child, but her husband, John, says that she needs to rest and do no work until she is completely well. Jane is given no choice; she follows John’s orders without much question. Her spirit, creativity, and all around state of being is suppressed. He controls every aspect of her life, and she says nothing. She internalizes her anger and resentment toward him because he is “a physician of high standing and [her] own husband,” and she should not argue with what he says (808). Over the months, Jane remains calm and collected on the outside, always making sure to not let her “nervous condition” show in front of John (809). However, she eventually retreats so deeply into her own mind that she suffers a psychological break and cannot escape. John’s suppression of her vitality not only prevents her coming out of her depression, but it actually pushes her mind closer to collapse. With this story, Gilman highlights the differences in the roles of men and women in society. During this time period in upper middle class white society, men held all power and women were
Cited: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of America Literature. Comp. Jeane Campbell Reeseman and Arnold Krupat. Ed. Julia Reidhead. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. 808-819. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: First Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.