Compare and contrast the ways that Gender Roles are explored in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘Their House’, both by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin’s novella ‘The Awakening’.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story telling about a young woman who is eventually driven mad by the society. The narrator is apparently confused with the normal being defined by a "true" and "good" woman constructed by society dominated by men. "The Awakening" addresses the social, scientific, and cultural landscape of the country and the undergoing of radical changes. Each of these stories addresses the issue of women’s rights and how they were treated in the late 19th century. "The Awakening" explores one woman's desire to find and live fully within her true self. Her devotion to that purpose caused friction between her friends and family, and also conflicts with the dominant values of her time. On the other hand ‘’Their House’’ is a novel, where the gender roles are totally switched around. It is representing the idea that if you don’t follow what is ‘socially acceptable’ at the time and you decide to do things differently it doesn’t mean that you are going to fail and be pushed out from society, but you actually have the potential to be successful you just have to work hard to prove it. Upper and middle-class women in that era mostly had a role as their husband’s ornament, the angel of the house.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, this beautiful to be looked role of a wife is similar to that of wallpaper. In a masculine society, relationship between a husband and a wife was similar to a relationship between a parent and a child. A parent had a right to say things and a child had an obligation to listen and to do what the parent said. A child was not supposed to disagree. The child must submit him or herself to the parent. It made the child dependent on the parent. It can be seen clearly that the husband treated his wife as a child. He called her his “blessed little goose”, and...