This paper is concerned with the short stories ‘A Rose for Emily’ by William Faulkner and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Guilman. It will analyse these stories and compare their heroines in order to show how they are treated by the world around them in order to understand their value as feminist literature. In her work ‘Gender Trouble,’ Judith Butler writes that gender should be understood as something which is constructed by discourses in society and which itself to conceptions of science and nature in such a way that it appears entirely natural when it is in fact socially constructed. She writes; ‘gender is the discursive / cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as “prediscursive,” prior to culture…a politically neutral surface on which culture acts.’ (Butler, 2006. 70) It is possible to understand the value of a text as ‘feminist’ based on how it responds to the the social relationship through which gender is formed.
Both Faulker and Gilman tell stories of women who are mentally unhinged and who are to some extent the victim of the circumstances and the social conventions in which they find themselves. In the ‘Yellow Wallpaper,’ it is clear that the central female character exists in a world in which she is treated as if her eventual madness is inevitable and that she exists in a state of imprisonment which is mediated and caused by those around her, and in particular their attitudes towards things such as gender and the essential nature of ‘women.’ Guilman has her narrator describe her surroundings in terms which make this entrapment clear, and at the same time natural. This conflation occurs through her attitude towards her husband and the social duties which she must perform for him. While she is evidently ill, she is nonetheless forced to punish and criticise herself for the problems she sees herself as causing for those around her: ‘I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition. But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself…and that makes me very tired. (Guilman, 2000. 77)
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"Feminism in ‘A Rose for Emily’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.".
At the end of the story this culminates as the narrator suffers real madness and believes that she has impressed her husband most completely when she has in fact sealed her own entrapment. Throughout this process her husband, John remains the narrator’s point of reference for her desire to please and for her fear of punishment. She is an object of fascination for those who seek to treat her and, at the same, is objectively imprisoned by their desire to study and ‘help’ her.
Like Gilman’s character, Faulkner’s Emily is a figure of fascination for her local community. The opening lines of the story describe as a ‘monument’ and ‘curiosity.’ (Faulkner, 1990. 5) They treat her both as a threat and as a mystery and several discourses of the oppression of women converge in the way in which she is described. This is shown vividly in one episode in which several people sprinkle lime around her house in an attempt to disguise a smell which is emanating from it. Faulkner writes; ‘They [men] broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the out buildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol.’ (Faulkner, 1990. 7) The image of the idol recalls witchcraft and pagan ritual. By using this description, Faulkner makes it clear that not only must society attempt to domesticate a female figure who lives an unconventional life. In a way similar to Gilman’s character, Emily is confined to largely to one location, her house and also in the discourses of those who surround her. This confinement is shown to be, in some sense, self-imposed but also largely mediated by the social circumstances in which she lives. This combination of social and personal circumstances creates another similarity with Gilman’s narrator. Faulkner describes how Emily ‘died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.’ (Faulkner, 1990. 12) Both are prisoners, both objectively and in terms of other’s perceptions of them. One can imagine Gilman’s character dying in a similar way to Faulkner’s.
In conclusion, this paper has shown how the female characters in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘A Rose for Emily’ are orientated towards a society which defines and imprisons them. By demonstrating the way that social discourses perpetuate and facilitate this imprisonment, both stories can be understood to be feminist in their content and their aims.
- Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. London: Dover Thrift, 2000. Print.
- Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. London: Perfection Learning, 1990. Print.
