Throughout time, there have always been many issues or events in the past that are similar to those in the present. Two writings that are a great example of this are Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue Deconnick, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Although these stories were written in different eras, and have completely different settings, they both have the same purpose. By finding the purpose behind each story, we can see that they are the same, which most people do not see. This is important because it allows the reader to see that although women’s roles have greatly progressed since “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in 1892, Bitch Planet, which was published in 2015 shows that there is still work to do in society for women to have complete equality to men.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the woman in the story is forced to stay in a room by herself because she is seen as insane by the men in the story. As the story progresses, the woman’s condition only seems to get worse the longer she stays in the room. This becomes apparent when the woman starts hallucinating about seeing another woman trapped behind the wallpaper in the room. On the last day before she leaves the house, she decides to tear down the wallpaper to free the woman. After she does this, the woman says “I don’t like to look out of the windows even-there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did”(Gilman 311)? During most of the story, the woman in the room talks about the woman behind the wallpaper from a third person perspective, but after she tears down the wallpaper, she becomes the woman that she freed. During the late 1800s, also known as the Victorian era women were imprisoned into a life of being housewives, who could not read or write anything radical without being heavily criticized for it by men. So, in order to get her point across without being noticed, Gilman had to hide her radical purpose by calling the female main character in the story insane. Since it was more common for women to be categorized as insane during this era, most people were blinded from seeing Gilman’s true purpose behind the story, which was to shed light on the fact that women could not be themselves, because they were restricted by the rules of the patriarchal society.

Gilman not only used this story to show how women were oppressed during this era, but also to show how ineffective the rest method was. The rest method was a popular method that was used to treat insane patients during the Victorian era, by making them constantly rest. Ultimately this method only made the patients condition worse, like the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper”.

In Bitch Planet, Penny, the main character is taken away from her grandmother when she is eight, because she was becoming obese. The people who took her are a group of men called the Fathers. The main story takes place in present day, where Penny is imprisoned for crimes such as: “Aesthetic offenses” and “Wanton obesity”(DeConnick 177). DeConnick uses this to show how women today are imprisoned by societies expectations of them. In today’s society, women are not accepted by society if they are obese, or if they are not aesthetically pleasing to men. So in order for Penny to be accepted by the Fathers, she had to “See [herself] through the Fathers’ eyes”(DeConnick 188). In today’s society, women have the freedom to have jobs, and to write or read radical things without being heavily criticized for it. Deconnick uses this freedom to write this story, which openly shows the reader how she feels about being a woman today. The images of the patriarchal government, accompanied with the vulgar comments made by the men in the story who make fun of Penny for being overweight when they say “Who wants to come home to that”(DeConnick 194), are obvious representations of how she feels women are disrespected and restricted by men.

Something that can be easily noticed when these two stories are analyzed together, is the fact that their purposes are the same. The purpose of both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Bitch Planet is to bring attention to the fact that women are being held hostage by the limitations set on them by their male dominated societies. Another similarity between these two stories, is the fact that both women are accused of being insane. What these similarities symbolizes is the problem that women still do not have equality to men after a hundred twenty four years of fighting.

 One difference that can be noticed between these two stories is the fact that the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” does not have a name, while the woman in Bitch Planet does. This difference is important, because it shows that Gilman does not give her character a name, because she wants the reader to insert themselves into the story. The reader can not insert themselves into DeConnick’s story, because the main character has a name, and a face because it is a graphic novel.  Another difference that can be noticed when these stories are analyzed together, is the fact that the authors get their message across using two completely different methods. While Gilman uses a more secretive approach to get her message across, DeConnick is more open with her feelings and views on society. This difference in methods is largely attributed to the huge difference in the time periods that these stories were written in. Since “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written during the Victorian era, which was a time when women could not write anything that was seen as radical without being heavily criticized for it, Gilman had to hide her true feelings behind the metaphor of the woman trapped behind the wallpaper. In today’s society, women are allowed to write about whatever they want to without being heavily criticized for it, but they are criticized more about how they look. This difference symbolizes the fact that women’s fight for equality has paid off in most ways, but they are still being restricted based on how they look. 

In conclusion, there are many issues from the past that have been resolved, but there are also ones that still exist today. A good example of the ladder, are “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” during the Victorian era to not only show how women were oppressed by men, because of the fact that they could not work or openly express themselves; but also to show how the rest method was ineffective because it only made the insane worse. DeConnick, like Gilman, also wrote Bitch Planet to show how women are currently being oppressed by men, but for there looks, instead of not being allowed to work. The similarities between their arguments are important because they show how far we still need to go as a nation, in order for women to have complete equality to men; while their differences show how far we have come, because of the fact that women have more freedom to express themselves in today’s society. 

