Compare And Contrast A Rose For Emily And The Yellow...

Challenging the Status Quo In American society today, women and men enjoy equal freedoms and equal rights. As well, mental illness is treated both seriously and more effectively, and is being studied more than ever. The view of women and mental illness has shifted dramatically from those in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the short stories â€Å"A Rose for Emily† and â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† the protagonists experience gender stereotyping and live in a society where there are certain expectations of women all the while they suffer from mistreatment due to the lack of understanding of their mental illness. In â€Å"A Rose for Emily† and â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† William Faulkner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenge the role of women and the stigma†¦show more content†¦In turn, this emphasizes the lack of understanding of mental health during the time period. In â€Å"A Rose for Emily† and â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper,† Faulkner and Gilman employ point of view to question gender roles and mental health. Faulkner uses a third-person point of view in order to narrate the story from the perspective of the town. The perspective of an outsider looking in on Emily’s life highlights her lack of control as a woman and later, a lack of control she has over herself. The distant narrator creates a barrier to fully understanding Emily’s character and reflects how the town does not truly know her and her secrets. In contrast, Gilman uses a first-person point of view to narrate from the protagonist’s perspective. The utilization of an unreliable narrator allows for more understanding of the protagonist’s character, but less understanding of her situation as a whole. Moreover, the protagonist only writes when her husband John is not around which provides further insight into her deteriorating mental condition and the lack of control she has as a woman. Faulkner and Gilman use different narrative perspectives to achie ve similar results. Each point of view hides or highlights the female character in order to reveal the struggles and insufficient help they receiving. These stories provide commentary on common issues for women and mental illness for their time period. Faulkner and Gilman useShow MoreRelatedANALIZ TEXT INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS28843 Words   |  116 Pageselsewhere, most frequently to character or idea. Understanding a plot on a schematic level becomes even more difficult when dealing with works, usually novels, that have more than one plot. Many novels contain one or more subplots that reinforce by contrast or parallel the main plot. Some novels even contain a double plot, as in Thackeray’s â€Å"Vanity Fair†, where we are asked to follow the careers of both the selfish adventuress Becky Sharp and the innocent, good-hearted Amelia Sedley. As Amelia’s fortunes