Comparative Analysis Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper and Allendes An Act of Vengeance free essay sample

Perhaps the most distinctive indication of a great short story is the ability of an author to develop an important internal theme in order to portray a specific message to the audience about the nature of reality. In the short stories, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Isabel Allende respectively, there exists a common internal theme of female powerlessness. While both â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† employ a common theme of female oppression, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† uses it to analyze a protagonist who loses her mind as a result and â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† uses it to analyze a protagonist who loses her will to live as a result. In this paper, I will describe the unique way in which the theme of female oppression is embedded into Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†. I will then explain how Allende’s â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† also reveals the similar theme of female oppression. Finally, I will evaluate the difference between â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† despite the use authors’ utilization of the same internal theme. Gilman’s story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† contains a female protagonist who is married to an oppressive husband named John. Because the protagonist has been diagnosed with an unnamed â€Å"condition†, she believes that John knows what is best for her and therefore abides by his rules and regulations; one of which entails spending most of her time locked in a room with horrid yellow wallpaper that she despises. â€Å"I don’t like our room a bit† she says, â€Å"I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window†¦ but John would not hear of it† (Gilman 463). Even though she dislikes the room, John does not consider her opinion in the matter and thus reveals the protagonist’s powerlessness in the situation. Another obvious example of the extent of the oppression the protagonist faces is revealed when she says, â€Å"There comes John, and I must put this away, -he hates to have me write a word†(Gilman 463). Although the main source of the protagonist’s creative outlet comes from her writing, her husband does not allow it, which in turn forces the protagonist to sneak around behind his back in order to express her inner-most thoughts and imagination. Another example of the extreme oppression the protagonist of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† faces in her daily life is exposed when she reveals that John does not allow her to meet with her own family members. â€Å"I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day† she says, â€Å"and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia†(Gilman 467). This reveals the protagonist’s powerlessness even in matters of visiting her family. This deeply embedded theme of female powerlessness and oppression dominates the story and ultimately proves to have a grave effect on the narrator’s mind as she begins to hallucinate and imagine separate realities within the patterns of the yellow wallpaper. Like Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, Allende’s â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† also contains a profoundly rooted internal theme of female powerlessness. Allende’s protagonist Dulce Rosa is also an oppressed female who is unable to make decisions on her own due to the fact that she is a woman. In the story, Dulce Rosa’s father is a Senator whose home is attacked by an army of men that included a man named Tadeo Cespedes. When it becomes obvious that he is going to die in the attack, the Senator contemplates taking his daughter’s life as well so that she â€Å"would never fall into the hands of Tadeo Cespedes†(Allende 44). Although she is spared of death at her father’s hands, the initial decision of the Senator to kill his own daughter displays the powerlessness of Dulce Rosa to choose whether she will live or die. Only because Dulce Rosa promises to avenge the death of her father, is she spared of dying at his hands. Another example of the extreme oppression Dulce Rosa faces in â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† occurs when she is raped by Tadeo Cespedes after her father is killed. Tadeo exposes his oppressive nature when he says, â€Å"the woman is mine† and sexually abuses the fifteen year old Dulce Rosa as a way of claiming her as his property (Allende 44). Much like the protagonist of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, Dulce Rosa is also incapable of making any decisions due to the tremendous and occasionally violent oppression she encounters from the male individuals in her life. Although the story â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† is similar to â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† in terms of a common theme of female powerlessness and the use of a female protagonist who is oppressed, the results of the female oppression differ between the two stories. In Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, the protagonist of the story becomes increasingly less mentally stable as a result of the oppression in her life. Seeking a new creative outlet because her ability to write freely is suppressed, the protagonist begins to image a woman entrenched inside the patterns of the yellow wallpaper. â€Å"The front pattern does move-and no wonder† she says, â€Å"the woman behind shakes it†(Gilman 471). This imaginary scenario that the protagonist has made up in her head is a prime example of how the oppression she faces throughout the story negatively impacts her ability to distinguish between imaginary and reality. At the end of the story when John discovers that his wife has torn down the wallpaper and is creeping around the room like a mad woman, he faints but she continues on creeping around the room by stepping over his body and she says, â€Å"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 473). This is perhaps the most significant quote of the book, as it reveals the depth of the narrator’s powerlessness and the madness that occurs as a result of this oppression. While the protagonist of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† loses her mind as a result of the powerlessness she experiences in her daily life, the protagonist of â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† loses her will to live as a result of the oppression she faces. At the end of the story, Dulce Rosa agrees to marry Tadeo Cespedes because she has finally realized that she loves him. Although she loves Tadeo Cespedes, she cannot cope with the fact that she is unable to avenge her father’s death because of it. â€Å"She knew that she could not carry out the vengeance she had planned because she loved the killer† the audience is told, â€Å"but she was also unable to quiet the Senator’s ghost†(Allende 47). Instead of marrying the Tadeo, Dulce Rosa kills herself as a way of finding an escape from the oppressive life that she has lived. Because she is unable to marry the man that she loves due to her promise to avenge her father’s death, she decides that death is her only option. In conclusion, Gilman’s short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† and Allende’s short story â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† are similar in the common use of the theme of female oppression. They are also similar in the common use of female protagonists who are powerless over their lives in different aspects. While both utilize female protagonists and the theme of female oppression, the narrator of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† loses her mind as a result of the oppression in her life, while the protagonist of â€Å"An Act of Vengeance† loses her will to live as the result of the powerlessness she faces. By comparing these two stories, the significance of the theme of female oppression becomes obvious and the audience is taught a valuable lesson about the nature of gender and the result of extreme oppression in the lives of two completely different female characters.