Essay on Escape in A Rose For Emily and Yellow Wallpaper

Escape from Reality in A Rose For Emily And The Yellow Wallpaper In the Victorian era, women were thought to be weaker than men, thus prone to frailty and "female problems." They were unable to think for themselves and only valuable as marriage material. The women in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" are driven insane because they feel pigeonholed by the men in their lives. They retreat into their own respective worlds as an escape from reality, and finally rebel in the only ways they can find. Emily and 'John's wife,' the woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" who is never named, both feel stifled and suppressed by the men in authority over them. Emily, as a "slender figure in white in the background," is prevented from having suitors by her father (p. 505). The narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" talks much about how her husband, John, is careful for her, even to the point of urging her to rest completely and not write, yet "does not believe I am sick!" (p. 630). Both women are kept almost completely in the house, idle, with nothing to occupy their...