Comparative Essay Example: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments

The Narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" tells a story about a mentally ill woman who experiences her husband treating her like a child throughout the novel. In Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Declaration of Sentiments," she lists all of the grievances that men create for women.

While both are about women being infantilized, left alone, abused mentally and physically, and denied access to basic rights; both documents try to highlight the injustices that occur and how they feel. "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. " (Gilman 134) As the reader, in "The Yellow Wallpaper", you get an eye through the narrator, who has no name but seems to be the mentally ill woman that is forced to stay in the nursery of the house with her husband John, a well-known and respected physician.

With how the narrator in the yellow wallpaper describes these events that happen to John's wife/patient, you'll understand why the author would agree with the "Declaration of Sentiments" grievances that Elizabeth Cady Stanton stated, "He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God." (Stanton 2) Throughout the novel, John has acted as if he is a god above everything that rules over her.The narrator exclaims that she needs help that John will not provide, but instead belittles her and makes her out to be in the wrong.

“The color is hideous enough and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough; but the pattern is torturing.” (Gillman 140) John is the source of all the narrator's problems that the reader is aware of, as he forces his wife to stay in that dreadful yellow room, where she gradually becomes one with the space. Her mental illness becomes worse as she stays in this room, which drives her crazy. John denies her request to move to a different room. He constantly assures her that if she stays in this room, that it will help her illness. John constantly puts her down and treats her like a child that knows nothing.

From the beginning of the narrator's understanding of things, John enjoys belittling his wife/patient, calling her a "blessed little goose" (Gillman 134), and telling her all she has is temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency. "He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life." (Stanton 2) Elizabeth was not wrong with this grievance; in fact, it goes well with how the wife of John feels and how he infantilizes her consistently throughout the novel. The wife slowly loses her self-respect and willingness to continue to be independent. By the end of the novel, the narrator has been consumed by her psychosis and has become one with the house; her husband comes to the door and faints after seeing her mental state. The narrator slowly creeps over and rises above him, symbolically claiming her victory. In the end, John becomes the victim of his wife's insanity, as he can no longer control her. John even chains her to the bed so she cannot leave. She ends up ripping the wallpaper off the wall as she goes through a manic episode.