John Smith
Professor Martin
English 1302. TS2
5 May 2004 This essay short, but the comparison might give you some ideas for developing your own

		Common Motifs of “Desiree’s Baby” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Everyone has met her at least once.  The fragile, subservient woman who is overwhelmingly dependant upon her husband’s approval of every move she makes.  She begins to question whether or not the feelings she possesses are really her own and if her husband tells her that she does not feel a certain way, then naturally, she doesn’t.  In two short stories, Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby” and Charlotte Perkin-Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we are introduced to two of these very women.  Chopin’s main character, Desiree, is an orphan whose heritage is unknown, making her a very needy, lost creature.  Gilman’s main character, John’s wife, is an extremely smart woman who allows her husband to convince her that, for treatment of her sickness, she should be confined to a room, have no contact with anyone and stop writing (which is her passion).  Desiree and John’s wife are extremely similar in that both women are being oppressed by their husbands; however, it seems that neither of the women fully realizes this and both react differently to their abusive situations.
  Desiree is painfully unaware of the oppressive nature of her marriage; she instead believes that she lives inside a fairy tale.  It does not occur to her that fearing her husband at times, is unhealthy.  She confuses her fear of Armand with love:  “When he frowned she trembled, but loved him.  When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God” (Chopin 866).  She instead continues to love him “desperately” and allow his actions to dictate her happiness.  This is shown in the letter Desiree writes home to her mother after Armand accuses her of being black:  “I shall die.  I must die.  I cannot be so unhappy, and live” (Chopin 867).  Her mother’s reply is sent, begging Desiree to come home where she is loved.  Again, instead of making a decision on her own, Desiree asks Armand whether or not she should go, thus illustrating her weakness.  Scholar Madonne Miner emphasizes this weakness claiming that with this submissive gesture, Desiree once more “…presents herself as a text to be written by her husband.”  Before Armand expresses his wishes that Desiree depart, she is actually unsure whether or not she will leave.  Despite Armand’s obvious disgust towards Desiree, she still not only allows, but depends upon him to do the thinking for her; to determine her destiny.  Desiree does not control her own fate, instead Armand dictates her every movement.  She is a book without words, a mere puppet, until Armand places ink upon her pages or tugs upon her strings.  She has become a prisoner in his world, and now that she is fully reliant upon him, (much the way kidnapping victims become attached to their captors,) she does not believe she can survive without him.  
Much like Desiree, John’s wife in “The Yellow Wallpaper” exists in a prison-like world.  She is trapped in a mansion that she refers to as “a haunted house” and is placed, by her husband, into a nursery with bars on the windows.  Slowly, the confinement is driving her crazy; however, for some time she does not realize that her husband is the one who suffocates her.  Fortunately, John is certain to remind his wife of her “status” in the relationship with every demeaning innuendo.  He makes clear the father/daughter nature of their relationship by disregarding the fact that his wife is an adult!  He denies her the right to make her own decisions and treats her like a child with fanciful wishes. As Rena Korb notes in her critical essay "Overview of 'The Yellow Wallpaper,’” John turns down his wife’s request to change the wallpaper because then she would want the heavy bedstead removed, the bars taken off the window, etc (what outrageous requests these would be for a woman dealing with depression!)  When John makes these types of derogatory comments, Korb questions, “…is he reminding her of her confinement? Does she recognize this subtle way of controlling her? Rather than confronting such a possibility she instead, outwardly, relies on John's advice.”  John’s wife has been masterfully manipulated by her husband.  He has her convinced that his authoritative behavior is for her own good and that she does not know what is best for herself; he treats her like a child as John’s wife recounts in the following passage:  “I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake.  ‘What is it little girl…Don’t go walking about like that – you’ll get cold’” (Gilman 1156).  It is no wonder that between the placement of his wife in a nursery, laying her down to bed for an hour after meals and controlling her like a helpless infant that she loses her mind and seems to actually revert into a child.  On the final day in the mansion she locks her husband out of the room, rips the wallpaper off the wall, creeps around the room and says, “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you and Jane.  And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman 1161).  It is clear that she has confused fiction with reality as many children do when creating imaginary friends or believing that there really are monsters in their closet.  In fact, she resembles a child when taking into account her actions, for instance staring out the window and “watching” the woman behind the bars escape and creep around the garden, hiding when people pass by.  She even begins to see John and Jane as the enemies, who want to discover the “secret” of the wallpaper before she is able to.  She has immersed herself into a world of fancy, as many children with active imaginations tend to do: “And that is one of Gilman's points, that a woman reared to be a child, treated like   a child by her husband (and, one supposes, a father) will respond in kind. No woman expects to be literally put to bed, or removed from all responsibility” (Wagner-Martin).  
Had John taken his wife seriously, treated her like an adult and not dismissed her emotions without a second thought, the situation never would have escalated to this level of severity.
	Every abused woman has a different manner in which she deals with her oppressor.  For John’s wife, it is immersing herself into a fantasy world, in order to break free from his chains, and ultimately losing her mind.  For Desiree, it is giving up on life, because she feels that there is no longer anything worth living for, in view of the fact that her world revolves around Armand: “Desiree…places her own attachment to Armand above all other concerns in her life, including the welfare of her child.  Her sacrifice of her own life, and that of her child, reveals her basic inability to see an existence outside of her relationship with Armand; the love for her child is not sufficient” (“Critical”). Desiree has allowed her husband to control her life for so long that she actually believes that survival without him is impossible!  She is no longer capable of independent thought.  Desiree is not even aware of the fact that she is being oppressed.  John’s wife, although extremely brainwashed, is aware of her oppressor’s abuse, even if it is only subconsciously.  The more that she begins to identify the woman trapped behind the bars in the wallpaper as herself, the more she begins to see through John’s “good intentions.”  “He asked me all sorts of questions too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.  As if I couldn’t see through him!” (Gilman 1160).  When Desiree is told to leave, she ends her own life; her final thoughts most likely of her intense love for her abuser.  When John’s wife finally breaks down, she rebels against him, informs him that now that she is free, she can never be put back behind his bars.  John is so shocked at his wife’s actions and rebellion that he literally faints.  “To intensify the irony…Gilman has her narrator aggressively express her annoyance that John has fainted since she now has to run ‘right over him’” (Hume).  Since John’s wife was an independent thinker who enjoyed writing before she met her husband, she was eventually able to overthrow his “authority” when she finally realized the control he had over her life.  Desiree, on the other hand, has always been a fragile, impressionable young lady, without any sense of identity.  It is because of this codependency that she is unable to rise against Armand, leave with her child and continue on with her life.  Desiree was never a free thinker; therefore, it was not hard for Armand to overpower her in the first place.
	Desiree and John’s wife both deal with their oppressors in very different ways, even though both women share an important personality trait; they are both able to block out the negative aspects of their husband’s character and neither woman completely realizes that she is a victim of abuse.  Men like Armand search for these types of weak individuals, who will easily mold into the creation of their choice.  They depend on this personality trait to ensure that the women they choose will never realize, or act upon the realization, that they are being oppressed.  Desiree was perfect for Armand; she overlooked his abuse of the slaves, his temper, his affairs and she even let him convince her that she was black.  It seemed that John’s wife was a perfect match for his abusive needs, until his mistreatment finally drove her insane; only in insanity did she conclude that she was a victim.  Perhaps these women were brainwashed by the times that accepted the fact that men were superior to women and for that reason it only made sense that these men should do the thinking for their women.  However, this type of thinking is no longer accepted which is why it is so upsetting to realize that some women still allow control freaks like Armand and John to take away their freedom. This works-cite page is not included with this example essay.