A Rose for Emily and the Yellow
Wallpaper: A Comparative Study
Viewpoint Affects Point of View
By Deborah Gillespie
William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow
Wallpaper both explore the emotional trials of someone living in a recluse
situation. Likewise, the protagonist in both stories experiences insanity,
loneliness, feelings of being controlled, and finally, actions that show that each
became completely out of control. However, the stories are as different as the
authors themselves are. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a 32-year-old feminist and
social activist during the late 1800s—when the subjugation of women was
common—often struggled with depression. As such, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
wrote The Yellow Wallpaper from the viewpoint of an oppressed female suffering
depression while using the first-person perspective in such a way that provides
the reader with an inside look at the mentally unstable point of view of the
protagonist.
Conversely, William Faulkner, a 37-year-old eccentric man born into a oncewealthy family of plantation owners in Mississippi, seemed to have the point of
view that the Old South had deteriorated. Faulkner also became an outcast in
Oxford for his viewpoints concerning racism and segregation. As a result, William
Faulkner wrote A Rose for Emily, from the viewpoint of an unnamed town
member while using the third-person perspective to show the general
deterioration of the southern town, the town's people, and more specifically, one
of the town's once-wealthy inhabitants. Thus, even though both stories have
strong similarities in subject matter, the authors' individual points of view resulted
in two very different viewpoints concerning their surroundings and thus, two
dramatically different themes and underlying meanings in each of the stories.
In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner tells the story in the third-person from the
perspective of an unnamed narrator who is a long-time citizen of the town. The
town, described as a once wealthy area inhabited by chivalrous men and people
that held proper principles and that maintained community values had, over time,
aged and lost its value of community as well as chivalry. In the same accord, the
protagonist of the story, Emily, was once the beautiful daughter of an aristocratic
family within the town. However, Emily's father is overprotective and unable to
consider any man good enough for his daughter. As such, Emily's father prevents
her from finding true love, marrying, and living a normal life.
Additionally, after her father's death, Emily, now a spinster left with nothing but
the home, struggles to accept her father's death to such an extent that she
refuses to admit he is dead; thus, preventing his removal from the home for three
days. Later, the now reclusive Emily meets Homer Barron, a man holding a
temporary contract to work in the town. Town members notice the time Emily and
Homer spend together and assume they will marry. However, as time passes, no
one sees Homer again but everyone with interest in the situation appears content
in assuming that he must be living a reclusive life with Emily in the home.
However, upon Emily's death, town members enter her home and discover the
corpse of Homer in an upstairs bedroom lying on the bed next to a pillow with a
strand of Emily's hair on it leaving the reader to assume that Emily murdered
Homer in an effort to keep him and his imaginary love with her for all-time.
To gain a deeper understanding of the underlying meaning found in A Rose for
Emily, one must also attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the points of
view and ultimate viewpoint of the story's author. As noted earlier, William
Faulkner belonged to a once-wealthy family of plantation owners in Oxford
Mississippi. According to Kathleen Wilson (1997), Faulkner also grew up
enjoying the myths and stories of the area and he especially enjoyed stories
about his great-grandfather and namesake William Clark Falkner also known as
the Old Colonel (p. 248).
Interestingly, Faulkner, who often uses his own life experiences and family
members as inspirations in his stories, uses his grandfather as the inspiration for
the character Colonel Sartoris in A Rose for Emily. Even more fascinating,
Faulkner appears to use himself as the inspiration for Emily, the main character
in the story. The similarities include the fact that both Emily and Faulkner are
eccentric, grow up in the south, witness the deterioration of their surroundings,
and attempt to change reality to suit their personal desires and satisfy their need
to make things how they believe they should be rather than how they are. For
example, according to Wilson (1997), "Faulkner added the u to the spelling of his
name when he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force so that it would appear more
British. Faulkner also explained his limp and use of a cane as being a result of
war wounds and told stories about his experiences as a pilot during a war he
never fought. Furthermore, just as Emily witnessed the deterioration of her
southern environment, so did Faulkner. Thus, when Faulkner wrote "A Rose for
Emily" at age 37, he wrote the story from a third person perspective of someone
seeing the steady breakdown of an aging and changing society both inside and
out. E.g. as the old south that Faulkner resided in had lost its prestige and
beauty, undoubtedly affecting him personally, so did age and decay affect the
town and main character in A Rose for Emily.
Conversely, in The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story in
the first-person from the perspective of the unnamed protagonist herself. In this
story, a women suffers from what appears to be post-partum depression and her
husband, a medical doctor, chooses to enforce the rest-cure, a treatment that
insists the patient should avoid all forms of mental and physical stimulation in
favor of total and complete rest until healthy once again. As a result, the mentally
unstable women, her husband, their child, and the husband's sister, move into a
temporary residence as a means of enforcing the treatment. Once in the home,
the husband locks his wife, the unnamed protagonist, in a room once used as a
nursery on the top floor of the home. The unnamed protagonist describes the
room as cell-like with bars on the window and a bed bolted to the floor with ugly
and deteriorating yellow wallpaper containing indefinable patterns on the walls.
While there, John, the woman's husband, prevents her from seeing her child or
writing. However, the woman finds a way to keep a diary and excerpts from these
writings provide the means for sharing this woman's thoughts with the reader.
As such, the diary excerpts not only show how the woman's mental stability
continues to fail but also how much the yellow wallpaper she stares at daily
affects her. She begins to notice patterns in the wallpaper that resemble bars and
eventually a woman trapped behind the bars trying to escape. According to
Siegel (2008), "the narrator's emotions, right from the beginning, seem close to
the surface and yet muted somehow by a sense that the narrator cannot or will
not see her impending madness" (p. 2). The diary excerpts also reveal to the
reader the woman's desire to remove all the wallpaper from the walls not only to
free the imagined trapped women but also to prevent the wallpaper from trapping
the unnamed protagonist as well. At the end of the story, only two days before
her and her family are to leave the home, and after determining that suicide
would be "improper and might be misconstrued" her mental stability is completely
lost and she begins circling the room compulsively essentially becoming the
trapped woman behind the bars of the wallpaper.
As with Faulkner's story, to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying
meaning found in Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, one must also attempt to gain
a deeper understanding of the points of view and ultimate viewpoint of Charlotte
Perkins Gilman. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's single and struggling mother raised
Gilman and her sibling in the north. According to Abcarian & Klotz (2007,)
Gilman's "mother was unable to provide her children with a secure and stable
childhood" (p. 1157). Additionally, after the birth of Gilman's only child, "Gilman
was immobilized by a deep depression" (Abcarian & Klotz, p. 1157). To make
matters worse, a respected and noted neurologist, S. Weir Mitchell, prescribed
Gilman the "rest-cure"—a treatment that requires the patient to avoid all forms of
mental and physical stimulation—and like the unnamed protagonist in the story,
Gilman believed her husband at the time forced the treatment to an unhealthy
extent. After a while, Gilman decided that the treatment was not only unbearable
but also served to keep her insane instead of helping her to become well again.
As a result, Gilman abandoned the treatment and her husband in hopes of living
a well-rounded, sane, and successful life.
Thus, when Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper at age 32, she wrote a story
about a woman with a single child that felt caged in a room by a husband that
was sustaining her insanity by also enforcing the "rest-cure" to an unhealthy
extent. Furthermore, Gilman's story depicts the desire and ultimate perceived
success of the women's ability to break free from the cage. Due to the intimate
relationship between Gilman's life and the story, Gilman was able to write the
story from a first person perspective in such a way that portrayed the true plight
of the individual personally and with careful consideration for the character's
emotions and resulting actions.
After reading each of the stories and researching the biographies of their
respective authors, one can understand better the characterization, setting,
symbolism, and realism within both stories. For example, Faulkner uses himself
and others surrounding him as an inspiration for his characters in such a way that
enables him to describe them in more detail and include intimate knowledge of
their activities. Additionally, Gilman establishes setting in such a way that
includes symbolism by having the unnamed protagonist describe her
surroundings as a rather nice home—almost a mansion—with gardens.
However, the unmaintained structure, barred window, bolted down bed and ugly
wallpaper seem to symbolize the true feelings and mental condition of the
narrator—a woman caged, controlled, and unstable in otherwise fine
surroundings. Moreover, both authors make extensive use of symbolism
throughout the story. According to Wilson (1997), the yellow wallpaper in
Gilman's story not only symbolizes the protagonist's state of mind, but also "in a
more general sense, the wallpaper symbolizes the way women were viewed in
nineteenth-century society" e.g. "containing pointless patterns, lame uncertain
curves, and outrageous angles that destroy themselves in a heard of
contradictions" (p. 282). Additionally, the nursery itself may symbolize society's
view of women as children in the early nineteenth-century while the bars may
represent the "emotional, social, and intellectual prisons in which women of that
era were kept" (p. 282). Likewise, Emily's house in Faulkner's story seems to
symbolize the old south itself as it "had once been white, decorated with cupolas
and spires and scrolled balconies" but has since become "an eyesore among
eyesores" (1.2).
Nevertheless, even though both authors used a great deal of symbolism, realism
also shines through with the literal descriptions of how things were during the
stories' respective time eras. For example, the woman in Gilman's story was
financially dependent on her husband, not permitted to make her own decisions,
and frequently treated as a child. Likewise, the southern town and town's people
in Faulkner's story behaved normally for people of that time era and their
treatment of one another changed as time passed just as it did in documented
history. Therefore, it is the well thought out marriage of symbolism and realism
coupled with superb descriptions to assist with setting and characterization that
make both of these stories powerful as merely enjoyable works of fiction as well
as meaningful pieces of literature one should keep in his or her literary canon.
In summation, both Faulkner and Gilman used personal life experience to write
stories depicting their views of what happened around them with the use of
outstanding writing skills to include excellent characterization and symbolism
within detailed settings. However, Faulkner's story, though created with
characters inspired from his own life, came from his outside point of view of
society as a whole while Gilman's story was from a more personal and intimate
viewpoint. Ironically, in both cases the stories depicted the emotional trials of an
adult female living a reclusive lifestyle and falling deeper and deeper into insanity
as time passed. However, Faulkner's story depicted an aging town with an
eccentric main character being controlled by her father and losing control of
herself from a third person perspective while Gilman's story depicted a main
character being controlled by her spouse and losing control of herself from the
first person perspective. As a result, one can assume Gilman's personal
experience encouraged her to provide readers with a more personal perspective
of what the main character was going through while Faulkner's experience
encouraged him to provide readers with his general view of society's decay.
Thus, each author's point of view affected his or her viewpoint; and this played an
incredible role in causing two stories with similar plots to encompass two very
different themes and underlying meanings.
References
Abcarian, R., & Klotz, M. (2007). Literature: The human experience (9th ed.).
Boston, MA: Beford/St. Martin's.
Siegel, J. S. (2008). Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Retrieved September 22, 2009,
from http://www.charlotteperkinsgilman.com/2008/04/i-introduction.html
Wilson, K. (1997). A Rose for Emily: Short stories for students (1 ed.). Detroit, MI:
Gale.
Wilson, K. (1997). The Yellow Wallpaper: Short stories for students (1 ed.).
Detroit, MI: Gale.