Another typical characteristic of ghost stories is the happening of the unexpected. In horror films, things leap out of corners and make you jump. Ghost stories are no different! You will be reading a passage when suddenly something unforeseen will happen. This happens I n both of the stories. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane suddenly turns into the “woman in the wall”, almost in mid sentence. One minute she is telling her husband where the key to her room is, and the next she has turned into the “woman in the wall”. There is also a small twist in "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe at the very end as all the way through the story he is saying how cleverly he planned the murder and how it was impossible for him to be found out and then he gave himself away. However, I think this is mostly due to his immense guilt making him hear things.
Above all of these things, ghost stories have an emotional effect on their audience, be it horror, excitement, disgust or just pure terror. "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman both have an enormous effect on the reader emotionally aswell as just being remarkable stories. Both are very mentally stimulating, inciting questions in the readers mind. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is extremely thought provoking, especially at the end. When Jane performs her weird personality switch, there are lots of issues as to how this has happened. One opinion is that she has actually turned into the woman in the wall, through bizarre magic of some sort. Another is that the woman has just possessed Jane’s body, and taken over her mind. The third is that she has simply gone mad.
In "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, there is a slight “spookiness” near the end, when the murderer hears the beating of his victim’s heart. It is at first described as “a low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.” This immediately makes the reader wonder what the noise is. This makes it slightly eerie, in that it is an unfamiliar sound, from an unknown source. However, it soon gets beyond scary and starts to become sinister as the sound is revealed to be the beating of the victim’s heart, despite the fact he is already dead. This is a different way of raising questions in the minds of the reader. Another is to indulge in a large amount of description. This doesn’t as much make the reader question the text, but makes them visualise the person or object that is being described. If the description is good enough, the reader momentarily forgets about the story and dedicates their whole mind to envisioning the picture in their minds eye. This gets the reader more wrapped up in the story and they therefore enjoy it more. Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses this technique in “The Yellow Wallpaper” when Jane is describing the wallpaper.
“I never saw a worse paper in my life, one of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions”
She goes on in this manner for quite a while, describing next the colour of the paper, “a smouldering unclean yellow”, everything she describes is negative in this section, and it reflects when you imagine it.
There are a lot of similarities between the two stories. Both were written in the nineteenth century, by American writers. Both are very famous ghost stories in Europe as well as the USA. Both are psychological thrillers, exploring mental status and breakdowns. They are both written in the first person, and revolve around that one central character all the way through. During the story, both protagonists change in some way. Jane in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman changes into the woman in the wall, and the murderer in "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe loses his mind when the beating heart of his victim haunts him. Jane and the murderer both have aberrant perception. They both honestly see things differently to the rest of the people around them. To Jane’s husband and his sister, the wallpaper is just like any other, slightly ugly wallpaper, but to Jane it is the whole obsession of her life. And the murderer sees the old mans eye completely differently to anyone else around him. Both of the main characters have an obsession, Jane with the wallpaper and the murderer with the eye. Both are slightly mislead, Jane thinks that her husband is doing best for her when he is clearly not. And the murderer thinks that the eye has cursed him when it hasn’t.
There are also differences in the stories. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is based on her own life experiences, and is almost an autobiography of a short part of her existence. "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe is purely fiction. It also has a theme of guilt and it is a crime story. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman both the main character and the author are female, whereas in "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, both are male. The style of the writings is different aswell. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is in a journal form, but "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe is more of a flashback, written in the past tense. There are then more material differences, mostly to do with the plots. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman s set in the country, and Jane sees her ghost. She is also married. In "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe the murderer lives in the town. He hears his victim’s ghost, and he is not married. The stories also have completely different outcomes.
I think that both "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe are not particularly typical ghost stories, but they both have different aspects that are characteristics of ghost stories also. "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe is more of a ghost story than "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but it is still not very cliché. "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe actually involves some sort of ghost, in the old man who was killed, but the woman in the wall in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman isn’t necessarily a ghost. Taken as a whole, both stories are excellent pieces of writing that are extremely original and almost, but not quite ghost stories!
