Society would like to think that over the past hundred years women’s rights and gender roles have shifted dramatically.  However, when looking at the unquestionable similarities between Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, written in 1890, and Kelly DeConnick’s Bitch Planet, published in 2014, it is easy to see that women’s place in society has hardly changed.  Despite the vast difference in writing style and text type between Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and DeConnick’s Bitch Planet, they both accurately depict the gender stereotypes of their time periods.  Since Bitch Planet is a modern text it accurately reflects the struggles of women in today’s society while The Yellow Wallpaper allows the reader to truly see what it was like to be a woman in the late 19th century.  By looking at the main character in each text’s strong emotional reaction to societal expectations, we can see how much control public opinion has over women.  This proves that although these texts were written over a hundred years apart, women in today’s society, are still being pushed to the same unrealistic and sexist standards that they were in 1890.

Although the settings for the two texts were complete opposites, Bitch Planet taking place in a dystopian future society and The Yellow Wallpaper in the late 1800’s, the traditional idea of a woman’s place in society was made obvious in both texts.  Deconnick reflects female roles in through the newscaster and her reports on weight loss, diet plans, and celebrities.  Although exaggerated, the reader can see how the same messages are being projected in social media and advertisements today.  There is a clear emphasis on how a woman looks and most of the women in this society just accept and conform to the standard definition of what being a woman should look like.  In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman masked the ideas of how females were supposed to act within comments from John, the narrator’s husband, and statements that the narrator writes about how she is supposed to be a good stay at home mother and wife like everyone else. Throughout the 1800’s and even into the 1900’s it was an expectation for women to be housewives.  Although it is not unheard of in today’s society for a woman to be the bread winner of the family, more often than not women are expected to be stay at home mothers.  Despite the fact that some gender roles may be more suppressed than they were when The Yellow Wallpaper was written, many of the same societal standards are still prevalent today.

 Both texts focus on the idea that a woman is supposed to place an excessive amount of value on how society sees them instead of how they see themselves.  DeConnick made this theme blatantly obvious with the line, “How long since you prioritized how others see you.” (DeConnick, 190).  This quote was in reference to Penelope, who compared to the women around her was taller, bigger, and more masculine looking.  In her article about Bitch Planet Martha Cornog noted that, “The women prisoners are depicted as vivid, diverse, imperfect, strong,” (Cornog).  All of these women who are considered the outcasts of society are depicted as non-stereotypical females.  The image of these women represents how society views women who do not necessarily fit the typical standards of beauty.   The importance that women place on public opinion is reinforced in The Yellow Wallpaper in which the narrator was not even allowed out of the house until she got, “better”.  Had people seen the narrator in the state that she was in, which was not the happy stay at home mother that society wanted her to be, then their opinions of her would have changed.  Although both The Yellow Wallpaper and Bitch Planet are works of fiction, these themes are brought to life in today’s society.  Women are constantly surrounded by images of what they are supposed to look like and act like and these unattainable standards consume the lives of women across the globe.  

Both of these texts also reflect the power that men have over women.  In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is forced into the rest cure as her treatment for her postpartum depression, which at the time was misdiagnosed and poorly treated.  The real tragedy of the narrator’s situation is that her husband genuinely believes that he knows more about what the narrator is going through than she does.  As Elizabeth Kautz points out in her article on Power and Sexuality, “the woman is trapped not only in a room, not only in a prescriptive cure, but clearly in the more complex world of male discourse and diagnosis,” (Kautz).  Kautz’s statement represents more than just the gender roles of the late 19th century.  In fact, the same ideas are represented in modern texts such as Bitch Planet where Penelope’s fathers think that she wants to be like the image of an ideal woman that they constantly force on society.  The events in these pieces of literature relate to more than just the extreme treatment of women in the texts.  These same ideas are constantly taking shape in modern society when for example, a man offers to carry something heavy for a woman.  Although this may be just a kind gesture with no ill intent, it still reinforces the idea that women need men to help them or that men are more capable of doing certain things than women.

Just as Gilman did in 1890, DeConnick is opening the door to conversations on the far too widely accepted gender roles.  Although feminism and women’s rights movements across the globe have made leaps and bounds over the past hundred years, texts like The Yellow Wallpaper and Bitch Planet remind us that the everyday expectations for women have yet to change.  They remind us that although women may have the right to vote, there has still yet to be a female president.  They remind us that although women are now encouraged to join the work force, there still no laws in the United States requiring paid maternity leave.  They remind us that just because you are a woman, you are expected to be kind and smart and polite and pretty and always do what you are told.  They remind us that without an active effort to change, gender roles will remain the same for the next hundred years.
