FREE ESSAY ON COMPARISION OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER AND THE DARLING

COMPARISION OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER AND THE DARLING

Comparison of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Darling"
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper", and Anton Chekhov's, "The
Darling", we are introduced to main characters with lives surrounded by control. In
Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper", the main character, which remains nameless, is
controlled by her husband, John. He tells her what she is and is not allowed to do, where
she is to live, and that is she is not permitted to see her own child. In Chekhov's, "The
Darling", the main character, Olenka, allows her own opinions and thoughts to be those of
her loved ones. 
When John puts the narrator into the room, she writes in despite of him telling her that
she should not. At the end of her first passage, the narrator tells us, "There comes
John, and I must put this away - he hates to have me write a word". The narrator was told
that writing and any other intellectual activity would exhaust her. The only thing that
exhausts her about it is hiding it from them. The narrator tells us, "I did write for a
while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal - having to be so sly about
it, or else meet with heavy opposition". Conrad Shumaker suggests that John believes that
if someone uses too much imagination then they will not be able to figure out reality. 
"He fears that because of her imaginative 'temperament' she will create the fiction that
she is mad and come to accept it despite the evidence - color, weight, appetite - that
she is well. Imagination and art are subversive because they threaten to undermine his
materialistic universe"
In Gilman's "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper", Gilman tells us that when she was sent
home from the rest cure, Dr. Mitchell gave her "solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life
as far as possible,' to 'have but two hours intellectual life a day,' and 'never to touch
pen, brush, or pencil again' as long" as she lived.
The narrator cannot even be around or raise her baby. John hired a nanny, Mary, to take
care of him. This even makes her more nervous. The narrator tells us, "It is fortunate
Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes
me so nervous". In this short story, the narrator was forced to stay without her baby. In
the introduction Thomas L. Erskine and Connie L. Richards tell us, Gilman was "very much
like her father in important ways, for she 'abandoned' her daughter to her husband and
like him, preferred to deal with her emotions at a distance - in letters, books, or in
her fiction". From this we see that Gilman actually had a choice on whether to be without
her child. In the story, the narrator was told not to have her child around because of
stress. 
When the narrator tells about the room, she says, "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted
something downstairs that opened to the piazza and had roses all over the window, such
pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it". The room has barred
windows and "rings and things in the walls". The narrator hates the ugly yellow
wallpaper, but when she wanted John to change it, he told her "that I was letting it get
the better of me, and nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such
fancies". Every time the narrator asked John for a different room, he threatens her with
a room in the basement. 
Personally, I believe that John is doing everything wrong to help the narrator. Treating
her like a child did not help her get well, it was her own strength at the end of the
story that made her well again. John told the narrator not to write, see her child, and
which room to live in. 
In Chekhov's, "The Darling", Olenka's opinions changed with and as often as her husbands.
When she was married to Kukin, the manager of a theatre, all of her thoughts were of the
theatre. Whatever "Kukin said about the theatre and the actors she repeated." She
repeated these things as if she loved the theatre her entire life. She never even spoke
of the theatre until Kukin came into her life. 
Only three months after Kukin dies, she meets Pustovalov, a timber merchant, and marries
him. She started talking about timber as if "she had been in the timber trade for ages
and ages, and that the most important and necessary thing in life was timber." She even
"dreamed of perfect mountains of planks and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting
timber somewhere far away." Olenka never allowed for thoughts or opinions of her own.
"Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot, or that business was
slack, she thought the same." She lived happily with him for six years with all opinions
surrounding around timber. 
After Pustovalov dies, she only stays alone for six months. "It was evident that she
could not live a year without some attachment." Olenka then marries a veterinary surgeon.
"She repeated the veterinary surgeon's words, and was of the same opinion as he about
everything." This would embarrass him that she would try to talk about animals and things
as if she knew about them. "I've asked you before not to talk about what you don't
understand. When we veterinary surgeons are talking among ourselves, please don't put
your word in. It's really annoying." When he would tell her this she would ask, "But,
Volodichka, what am I to talk about." Olenka had nothing in her life meaningful to
herself that was worth bring up in conversation. She would surround her life around her
husband and his whole life. "She wanted a love that would absorb her whole being, her
whole soul and reason - that would give her ideas and an object in life, and would warm
her old blood." 
Olenka was alone shortly after marring the veterinary surgeon, when he departed to
Siberia with his regiment. Being alone she "thought of nothing, wished for nothing."
Without a man to structure her thoughts, she could not have any. It was as if Olenka
never learned how to think for herself. Her thoughts were always for someone beside
herself. When Olenka was alone "she had no opinions of any sort. She saw the objects
about her and understood what she saw, but could not form any opinion about them, and did
not know what to talk about." Olenka had nothing to make conversation and if she would
make conversation, she could not give her opinion. 
In conclusion, both women had a strong control factor in their life. In "The Yellow
Wallpaper", the main character makes no decisions of her own. Her husband, John, controls
everything she does. In "The Darling", the men surrounding her life control all of
Olenka's opinions. The men do not mean for it to be this way but that is just how Olenka
is. She allows herself to not be able to think on her own. These characters have similar
personalities. They both allow themselves to be controlled throughout their lives.