In The Yellow Wallpaper the character is dismayed by the fear of her impending madness: “I wish I could get well faster”. Although she believes that she is completely sane, she is fully aware that people around her find her behaviour very peculiar. She is also aware that she is becoming fixated by the wallpaper in her room and realises that she demonstrates hysterical tendencies towards it. In The Tell-Tale heart the character is also aware that people believe him to be mad and find his behaviour neurotic, but he is convinced that he is sane and sets out to assure the reader of this: “How, then am I mad? … You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Throughout the story he never shows fear of his madness because he never believes that he is.
At the beginning of The Yellow Wallpaper the character is quite sane although she does demonstrate signs of incipient madness. She is however ill and recovering from postnatal depression, which is why she is imprisoned in her little room. The irony is that instead of curing her illness, the imprisonment leads to her insanity. She is stuck in a room with nothing to do all day but to stare at some wallpaper and this drives her mad. The complete opposite occurs in The Tell-Tale Heart, where the man is totally free, but then because of his actions caused by his madness, he is imprisoned.
In both stories the characters demonstrate very irrational behaviour because of their madness. In The Yellow Wallpaper she demonstrates irrational behaviour in relation to the wallpaper, she becomes completely deluded by it and eventually resorts to tearing it down: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had pulled off yards of that paper.”. She is describing how she tore off the wallpaper in a desperate attempt to free the woman trapped behind. Although she does demonstrate irrational behaviour and it is due to her insanity, she is aware of the fact that other people find this type of behaviour unusual. This is shown when she says: “I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.”.
The man’s behaviour in The Tell-Tale Heart in response to his irrational phobia is very extreme but he too is aware that people find his actions neurotic. It is clear that the murder he commits is not the only irrational thing he has done due to his madness because he talks about the fact that he was ill and he knows that people use his illness as an excuse for his previous behaviour. Instead of using it as an excuse he reassures the reader that in fact it heightened his senses: “The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them.” he uses this as an excuse because his senses were so acute that he could hear the beating of the dead man’s heart.
In both stories, the characters also show obsessive tendencies towards objects. In The Yellow Wallpaper she becomes entirely obsessed by the yellow wallpaper: “I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness.” She spends the majority of the book describing the wallpaper and eventually becomes so infuriated by it she tears it down. In The Tell-Tale Heart, he becomes obsessed by the old man’s eye, “…it haunted me day and night…. He had the eye of a vulture.” It haunts him so much that for no other reason at all, other than to rid himself of the eye, he murders the old man. In both stories it is an undefined yet hugely troublesome threat that haunts the characters.
In both The Yellow Wallpaper and The Tell-Tale Heart the characters show confidence in the reasonableness of their arguments. In The Yellow Wallpaper she goes as far as stating that she is merely intrigued by the wallpaper whilst she is worried that it troubles her husband and her sister in law: “It only interests me, but I feel sure that John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.”. In The Tell-Tale Heart he sets out to demonstrate that he is not mad and demonstrates the confidence he has in his explanation: “Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”. He shows how confident he is again in his explanation later on in the story when he demonstrates his audacity by inviting the policemen to seat themselves down above the floorboards where the body lay, and even: “…placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.”
Although in both the stories the characters are fully aware that others look upon their behaviour as being unusual, they treat their bizarre actions with an enormous sense of normality. In The Yellow Wallpaper she exclaims when her husband faints in front of her: “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!” She treats him fainting in a completely bizarre manner and blames him from getting in her way as she creeps round the side of the room. In The Tell-Heart the man treats a similarly bizarre event very systematically as if it happens every day, “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.”
In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses a lot of gothic imagery and the repetition of imagery for effect. She uses the gothic imagery to give the impression that the house is haunted and also when describing the woman trapped behind the wallpaper. The language used and imagery created when describing the house itself and the room, builds up a very precise image of the stereotypical haunted house, frequently seen in horror movies. In The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe also uses gothic imagery and language repetition for effect; the character is surrounded evil and moral terrors. The language used to describe the systematic chopping up of the corpse is very powerful and cold. Throughout the story the author particularly uses language repetition, the best example of this is when the man hears the heart beating, “…but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder – louder – louder!”
The two stories were written for two very different reasons, The Tell-Tale Heart was written for the sole purpose of entertainment, whilst The Yellow Wallpaper written for political reasons. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her story to demonstrate the woman’s place in society in the 19th Century. Both stories capture the imagination and hold the reader’s attention through use of the first person. The climax in each story is very different and powerful as well as unexpected. On a personal level I preferred The Tell-Tale Heart for the following reasons. Firstly I found the woman’s account in The Yellow Wallpaper, although interesting, a little too emotional and personal to feel comfortable for me to relate to. This may be a gender response. On the other hand, I found that I could relate more easily to the dramatic qualities in The Tell-Tale Heart and the progress towards the final denouement better captured my imagination. This story also felt more timeless which makes it far easier to relate to.
