Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” are stories that are completely different but together, they give a complete picture of what it is like be a woman in that time, be forced to be in one place for extended periods of time, to be insane, and to have to take care of someone insane. There are lots of similarities between the stories from both women staying in one place for huge amounts of time, too their insanity, and even that they have men “taking care” of them. Both these stories show what is like to be a woman during this time period, early 1900’s and reconstruction era. However, the biggest part of these stories is that when you put them together you get a complete picture of what it’s like to be insane. The “Yellow Wallpaper” is the insane person looking out and from her view, while “A Rose for Emily” shows a town looking in at the insane person. Now while these stories are old they can still be used by readers to sympathize with not only the clinically insane, but also the loved ones that have to take care of them. They also can teach readers what is like to be a woman during that time period and make them appreciate it the freedom and equality women have now in the present day.

“A Rose for Emily” is a great story set during the reconstruction period after the civil war in the deep south. It is about a girl named Emily who grew up with a controlling father and became insane when he died and the town she lives in. The story is from the towns viewpoint and has a communal narrator and it tells of how they react with what Emily does and how they give her special treatment over certain topics like her taxes. It also makes sure the reader knows that women aren’t totally free during that time. They couldn’t vote, were expected to be a housewife, and the social norm was to respect their husbands and fathers and obey them without question. (Reconstruction) Emily lived with her father until she was in her late twenties, well past the age where most women in that time would be married with kids. She followed the social norm of living with her father until she was married, but since she never married, she never left. He was her whole world and so when he died, she even refused to let anyone in for three days to get the body.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about the wife on an unnamed rich man who had a “hysterical fit” so her husband locked her in a room with yellow wallpaper until she actually goes insane. The story is told from her point of view as she writes out what she sees and feels in a secret journal she hides from her caregivers. From this viewpoint, you can truly see exactly what she is going through and how she slowly goes increasingly insane and how she reacts to her husband’s “treatment”. It’s very ironic that when she initially goes into the room she seems perfectly sane, but overtime she goes crazy and they don’t find out till the day before they were moving. From her viewpoint, you can also see how she is controlled by her husband, but how she is fine with it initially because women during that time just listened to their husbands. If she had complained or ran off it would have been incredibly unusual and looked down upon by the society she lived in. She truly had no choice then too sit in that room her husband locked her in until she went completely insane. 

When you put Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” in conversation with each other you get to see the whole situation of a women in the two main characters situations. By reading “A Rose for Emily” the reader can see how the people taking care of Emily and that live around her react to what she does. It talked about how bad they feel for her but they mostly don’t do anything besides give her some tax breaks, get rid of a smell, and gossip. They really didn’t care and wanted her just locked away.  By reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” the reader can see what it was like to be that insane person. The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” started off just being locked in a room while she was still sane, and this gives a perfect view of her descent into madness. A reader can see how an insane person doesn’t think she is insane by seeing how the women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” thinks and reacts to her situation. By reading the “The Yellow Wallpaper” you can see what Emily was thinking in her situation. She was always locked in her house just looking out and sleeping with a dead body for years. However, by reading “A Rose for Emily” you can see how the husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was thinking while taking care of his wife. He locked her away because that’s what people did during that time. If you were insane you were locked away and while the husband in today’s eyes seems like a cruel idiot, he was just following what everyone did during that time and was trying to avoid having to send her to an asylum, which were terrible places in that time. (The History of Mental Illness) However, there were lots of things that happened during that time that today most people would think of as cruel, stupid, or wrong.

The treatments that both woman go through in both stories are very similar. In Wallpaper, the woman is locked away by her husband until she goes insane. In Rose, Emily is locked away by her father until she goes insane and then the town is perfectly happy to let her keep herself locked away after he dies. These “treatments” are incredibly destructive and caused both ladies insanity in the first place. The authors of both these stories depicted their treatments like this because not only is it historically accurate, it also truly makes the readers feel bad for what these ladies have went through. 

Women were treated while not terribly during that time, certainly not equally. In both Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” women are forced to listen to their husbands and fathers or the men in their life. Women were also expected to just do housework not manual labor or actual jobs. Per connerprairie.org the idea of the time was that women, “by keeping a clean, neat, pious home and filling it with warmth and inviting smells, women are achieving their highest calling.” In both stories, you can see how woman couldn’t do anything they wanted. In Wallpaper the woman, who is not even insane yet, doesn’t even argue when her husband wants to lock her away in a room till she magically gets better. In “A Rose for Emily” members of the local town even say, “Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen up properly.” They say this because it’s just so ingrained that housework and cooking are just women’s jobs and its outrageous to think a man would do them at all or even properly compared to a woman. 

When a reader puts Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” in conversation with each other they get a better picture of each story. When reading Wallpaper, you can see what it’s like to be insane and a woman from the first person. However, while reading Rose a reader can see how society treats women and their place during that time along what it is like to look in at an insane person or take care of one. After reading both you can truly get a whole another view on the other and that’s extremely important to getting a better understanding of the story. 
