Tyler Gutierrez
Keriotis
English 1b
09 March 2015
Striving for more
Since the dawn of men and women, women and their abilities were overshadow by society’s view of the public being too impure and not a place for a woman. Men rule society and its laws making America and most of the world patriarchal. In john Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the female characters both show signs of distress from being stuck in the inner sphere of influence rather than being able to actually experience life. Both authors use a small item to symbolize a big picture, something as simple as a chrysanthemum or wallpaper. In doing so both authors show the human desire of wanting to be more than just what they are confined to in the private realm.
In Gilman’s story the wallpaper is constant. She is stuck in a room with it due to her male doctor diagnosed, nervous breakdown, but also under the “orders” from her husband. She describes the wallpaper in the beginning as “repellant: a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 346). Though she hates the wallpaper this is the one thing that has been keeping her mind sane. She constantly watches and stares, trying to figure out the pattern and goes so far as to make sure nobody else figures it out but her. It’s the one thing she has control over in her life. As to other aspects of her life she has no control, such as going where she wants to or seeing who she wants to see. Her husband feels as though after her “breakdown” she shouldn’t be doing anything and that she should listen to him because he’s a doctor. In fact the woman is so isolated that she can’t even hold her newly born child. All she has is the wall paper. I guess one can say it’s the one thing that sets her free. She sees a woman trapped in the wall paper shaking and moving it. In a sense the woman is her. She begins seeing the woman in the wallpaper creep outside as if she gets out: “I think the woman gets out in the daytime….I can see her out of every one of my windows” (Gilman 353). The feeling of being trapped projected itself into a vison of a woman trapped in the wallpaper. Since she and her husband moved in the place she hasn’t even seen the grounds. So the woman who is creeping outside in the daylight symbolizes her urge and desire to leave this room and venture into the social realm. But whenever she tries to leave, someone is always watching as she is always watching the woman move, shake and creep in the wallpaper. The woman in the wallpaper represents what the wife feels and her desires to become more than a bedridden house wife.
In Steinbeck’s story “The Chrysanthemums” Elisa is another housewife stuck in personal realm. Like most women, she only tends to the gardens and such, for every other job was too dangerous or burdensome for a woman to do. But she longs for much, much more than that. Steinbeck describes her cutting the chrysanthemums with scissors as “…eager, over powerful. The chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her energy” (Steinbeck 228). These chrysanthemums are what she spends most of her time with, in a small garden, protected by a small wired fence. They symbolize who Elisa is on the inside, a beautiful flower wanting to grow. In a way this fence is a prison. It keeps her trapped in the personal realm, where she is “safe” from the impurities of the world. Though she is trapped with them, the chrysanthemums are a part of her. When talking with the traveling pot mender, she was given a little bit of an opportunity to live a little or part of her can at least. Steinbeck describes the look of her face when she gets a chance to send some flowers with him on his way. “Her eyes shone. She tore off the battered hat and shook out her pretty dark hair…Yes before they bloom. Her face was tight with eagerness” (Steinbeck 231). Though on the outside she shows happiness in what she does, deep down