From the outset of the story it is apparent that men were inferior to women in every aspect. The wife’s vivid imagination of a ‘haunted house’ brings her husband to laugh at her. This is not seen as mockery of her thoughts for ‘one expects that’. She also has personal disagreements with her husband’s ideas, and feels ‘congenial work, with excitement and change’ are forbidden things which would do her good. However she has to conceal these opinions and emotions due to her position, and is even restricted from writing them down on paper, as she cannot in any way reveal them ‘to a living soul’. Because ‘what is one to do’ when under the ideas of a ‘practical husband’. John is referred to as ‘practical in the extreme’ and the fact that he is a ‘physician’ makes his authority over his wife even greater.
The story shows the wife’s opinions obliterated by her husband’s unquestionable power over her actions, with which no consideration was made to what she thought was best for her recovery.
‘The Black Veil’ can also relate to this ignorant attitude. From this story, a naïve ‘young medial practitioner, is the narrative, ignoring the suffering of a distraught woman, for he feels he knows best. As well the doctor seeks a wife who will ‘gladden his lonely fireside, and stimulate him to fresh exertions’, just as the physician in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ who wishes to have an obedient and proper wife.
Here we can see that women were secondary in a household, as the dominant males need them for their accompaniment and to understand and obey their proposals.
‘The Monkey’s Paw’ another male-dominated narrative, shows the wife’s characteristics and role in the household. We are firstly told that she is ‘knitting placidly by the fire’. This is a very proper and feminine activity of the time, and the word ‘placid’ shows that she is calm and relaxed. She also refers to Mr. White as ‘dear’ and is soothing in her reassuring words, ‘perhaps you’ll win the next one’, as if to simply make him feel comfortable and content. She also talks ‘politely’ to their guest, as she is expected to.
Later on in the story the monkey’s paw brings the death of their son, Herbert. Upon instincts Mrs. White instantly knows something has happened to him, as a ‘stranger who seemed ill at ease entered the room’. Mr. White, finding her anxious remarks ridiculous, patronises ‘sit down and don’t jump to conclusions’ as though she should not express her own emotions. Her emotional intensity caused due to her loss makes her cry ‘wildly’, ‘feverishly’ and ‘hysterically’ to her husband, contrasting to her previously gentle and composed approach. The story does not interpret her as a deeply grieving mother, but a woman turning mentally unstable.
This too can be compared to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ where the woman’s involvement in her imagination, and later expressing it to others, shows her as mad. She appears not only physically imprisoned, but mentally too, as she was unable to set free her thoughts for so long. This imprisonment can be heightened by the fact that she was isolated in an ‘atrocious nursery’ with ‘barred windows’.
This gloomy atmosphere very much relates to the ‘little cold room’ found in ‘The Black Veil’. The place where the ‘young surgeon’ is instructed to go to, is shabby, there is ‘unwholesome moisture’ and the windows were ‘broken and patched in many places’. This setting is very contrasting to the opening setting, in which the doctor was very cosy, inside from the winter’s evening sitting comfortably in ‘his dressing gown and slippers’ by the ‘cheerful fire’. The story shows the suffering of lower class women, who are left without any aid, in ‘denial’ and ‘anxiety’.
We can also see the woman in the ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ left with only her own imagination and the wallpaper, making her rebel mentally against her husbands influence, so he eventually becomes ‘that man’, instead of John. He ‘stopped short by the door’ when he saw her improper state, he had lost his dominant stature, for he could no longer have any power over her actions or thoughts.
The stories altogether show that Victorian women were very much under the influence of men and their suggestions in their thoughts and actions. They were also taught to have certain qualities, expected of them by men. Several 19th century stories however, although showing this perception of women, have contributed to an alteration of attitudes towards women. Writers such as Dickens and Charlotte Perkins Gilman have helped provide 20th century women onwards, with a fairer, equal society, by highlighting female repression in their stories.
