Comparing ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ with ‘Hop Frog’ Essay

The scandalmongering paper and record hop capture were both(prenominal) written at a time of social turbulence and revolution. Poe wrote vamoose capture twelve years prior to the the Statesn civil war, so it is fitting that m whatever of the ideas in the stage carry a robust anti- hard workerry message. Similarly, The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1892 just before the culmination of equal-rights for women. Gillmans The Yellow Wallpaper is unmatchable of the early feminist texts in which her writing criticises the line that women were oppressed into and the ignorance of society as a whole. both Gillman and Poe attack fiercely these ideas that were both upheld and willingly accepted by the volume of society. These two settings immediately portray the two central founts, a char and a slave, as two of an unheard minority, who were subjected to an unjust, patriarchal world.One of the chief(prenominal) similarities between skip toad and The Yellow Wallpaper is the atmosp here of apiece of the stories. Both atomic number 18 horror stories are real dark, and keep up a horror genre, however skip over salientian is also similar to a fairy tale in that it is alternatively unbe lievable, and where skip over frogs surroundings are fantasy, the cashiers surroundings are quite a strong. Despite their differences, both of the stages surroundings and atmosphere are symbolic of the modal value the central character is loo ability or existenceness treated. For example, gluttony and bring downion of the power and his ministers surround Hop salientian and Poes darkly vivid descriptions of these reflect the mood of Hop- capture.The oily ministers and a orotund king sound simply grotesque and fill the commentator with a sort of stomach churning unease and tension at the discussion of Hop Frog. The corruptness and gluttony is hugely solid as it shows us the danger and easiness of comely influenced and eventually corrupted by avariciousness and alcohol. The teller of The Yellow Wallpaper has quite a live. It is describes as having blockaded widows and a nailed d take in bed, which give the impression of a prison rather than a place to fail easily again in. In point the room actually does become a prison for the teller, becoming much and more horrible as the story progresses.By the repetitive mathematical function of the word, joke in the first paragraph Poe emphasises the discomfort of Hop Frog as well as achieving a hugely separate out atmosphere. This makes the reader, who realises that this obviously jovial and harmless behaviour of the king and his courtiers is in incident, a make out more damaging and sinister, feel the tension and discomfort that Hop Frog endures. desire Hop Frog, The Yellow Wallpaper also has a tense atmosphere achieved by the speeded up pace of the story and the really niggling sendences, which flit from one idea to an other. These short sentences show the alertness of the t ellers mind as well as her increasing craze as she is left with no excitant other than her own thoughts. As the story progresses the fibbers madness grows and consequently her surroundings become more and more an extension of her own nightmarish imagination, eventually becoming as fantastical as Hop Frogs. passim the story, the paper in the room is a fiction for the tellers nausea and as her insanity grows, the cover becomes more and more hideous. At the outgrowth of the story, it is described as horrible cover. Her initial rejection of the wallpaper, shown when the cashier says I dont ex qualifyingable our room and asks John Let us go downstairs, is indicative of her compliments to get take a guidanceend and her rejection of insanity. The wallpaper is described as having a sickly sulphur tint, representing her disease, and appears to grow, fungus and toadstools suggests that her illness is growing, whilst Budding and sprouting suggest the continuity of this growth. D espite the fact that the images of the wallpaper worsen as time goes on, the narrator quickly becomes obsessed by it, sp expiry hours studying it.The narrator describes how It dwells on my mind so. Eventually, the narrator becomes so mad, that it is as if she is schizophrenic. She begins to see herself in the wallpaper as a woman, stooping down and creeping behind the pattern. As time progresses, the faint woman becomes clearer and stronger as the narrator becomes adynamicer. This shows her sane self, losing the troth to her wild self. Despite the awful surroundings, outside of her barred windows lies the garden. In crinkle to the wallpaper, the garden represents the narrators hope of freedom. The garden is described as delicious and where everything in the wallpaper is bad and infectious, everything in the garden is correct and healing. further the narrator is locked a focussing with her illness and is unable to reach the garden, which holds the constitute to her freedom, H ow I wish he John would let me go she tells us. This creates dramatic irony, as everyone knows what the narrator needs, including the narrator herself, except the narrators own conserve John.Just as the wallpaper and the narrators madness growth as the story progresses, the behavior of the king towards Hop Frog worsens. This is shown by Poes descriptions of the king, s trapting as our king, turning into a despot and becoming final examly a monster. By describing the king in this way, the reader is not still made to feel sympathy for Hop Frog by portraying him as a powerless dupe of this uncivilized abuse, but also make us forgive his final act of revenge, which is in fact utterly terrible.The ability and his ministers are black and exploitative towards Hop Frog and Trippetta. Poe illustrates this particularly by the reference to alcohol, The king takes advantage of Hop Frogs intolerance to wine it frantic the poor cripple almost to madness and sadistically he took pleasure in forcing the cripple to drink. Poe describes how Hop Frog was forced to be raffish as it was the poor dwarfs birthday and he is made to obey the program line to drink to absent friends, which forced tears to his look. This is incredibly ironic, as Hop Frog is not with his friend because he is a slave in the court of the king.In the yellow wallpaper, the narrators monster is her own husband, John, a physician. He ignorantly suffocates his wife, leaving her with no option but to escape into her own madness. He threatens her with Weir Mitchell who was no dishearten for treating women with this temporary nervousness. The narrator describes how he is alike(p) john and my brother, only more so, showing her wish not to be sent to him. John also keeps the narrator away from human contact, starving her of any stimulation or interaction. Despite his obvious love for her he treats her like a possession, this is shown when he fails to regard her as a human world by addressing her as sh e as if she isnt even there.This also symbolises the fact that he has slowly removed her identity. John regards his wife with humble more intelligence than a child, shown by his constantly patronising tone. He calls her little goose and little girl as well as remarking subscribe her as if she is little older than five. John also shows himself to be in reality rather selfish when he implores her get well for me. Despite everything, we contract to believe that John really does love his wife and wants to help her. unless it is through John that Gillman makes a very poignant observation of the way in which society treats women, pointing out the real danger of ignorance.The Narrator in The Yellow wallpaper is portrayed as an extremely bright original woman, disrespect the way John regards her. She expresses her thoughts and releases some of the energy that she is so blanket(a) of through writing. barely John forbids that she should write, the narrator tells us I am absolutely fo rbidden to work. The narrator herself tells us herself that excitement and change would do me good. Instead of excitement and change the narrator is contain to her bed and made to sleep most of the day I lie down ever so much now, John thinks its good for me.However, it is not good for her and the narrator describes how I dont sleep much at night, showing the disturbance of her mind. This results in the narrator having an enormous amount of pent up energy which, when combine with her unfitness to express herself creates enormous tension in the story. As the narrator searches frantically for an outlet for her imagination she inevitably becomes mad seeking the much-needed stimulation within the wallpaper. The narrators inability to express herself can be compared with Hop Frogs loss of control to the king when he is forced to drink. Hop Frog is described as beingness operate to madness by the wine, and madness Poe reminds us is no comfortable feeling.In both stories the spatial relation of women is severely criticized. In Hop Frog, Trippettas position as both a slave and a woman is exploited. Her grace and exquisite beauty is described as being universally admired. Poe describes how she was admired and petted suggesting the shocking abuse she is subject to. Poe describes how the king threw the entire contents of the goblet in her face, suggesting the complete abjection that she suffered. In The Yellow Wallpaper, we are introduced to Jennie who is the sister of John.She is described as a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper. Typically of a nineteenth coulomb Lady, Jennie is subservient accepting her position willingly and gratefully. Gillman describes how she hopes for no better art. Jennie represents the women of society who have grown to accept and are either to weak or to scared to rebel against a life that is no better than that of a slaves. The narrators position as a woman is very similar to Hop Frogs. She is treated as a possession by her husband John and is seen to have no real opinions or views. She describes how the heads that she sees are strangled by the wallpaper, turns them up side down and turns their eyes white. This is very much inactive of the way both she and the other women of society feel suffocated and oppressed by their position.Both stories are written in first person narrative, which makes them a lot more personal. Hop Frog is told by an anonymous Narrator, an onlooker, whilst The Yellow Wallpaper is written like a diary with the narrator, a woman suffering from post-natal depression being the central character. Semi-Autobiographical, the story is loosely based on Perkins own experiences. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper be nameless meaning that the narrator could be any woman in society. It is also a metaphor for the identity that has been lost through her illness and the ignorance of her husband, John.Both the characters are the victims of ignorance. The Yellow Wallpaper shows the ignorance of societ y about post-natal depression and the fact that no one is prepared to accept what the narrator is suffering from. Her case is not austere we are told. The result of this ignorance is that the narrators condition is not healed but instead made worse. She is taken for a rest retrieve and deprived of interaction with people and stimulation. Her creativity is crushed when she is forbidden to write. This inability to express herself, had dire consequences instead of recovering she instead she begins to descend except and further into her own madness. The wallpaper in her room, which gradually becomes more and more disturbing as her madness increases, shows this. This can be compared to Hop Frog who because of his difference in appearance is treated appallingly.The central characters of each story are portrayed as prisoners the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is portrayed as a prisoner, trapped by her social position as a woman, by her mental illness and by her own husband. Through h er story, Gillman attacks an extremely patriarchal society. She criticises the lack of respect for women and shows her anger towards the inability of women to escape from the position they are oppressed to. The room in which the narrator is put in, in redact to rest and recover from her illness is very much symbolic of her imprisonment. It is described as having barred windows and the bedstead as iron, heavy and nailed to the ground representing her being tied down. The fact that the room was a nursery first, is very ironic Firstly because she has no contact with her own baby and secondly because she has literally been reduced to the position of a child.Similarly, Hop Frog and his fiend Trippetta are salves, whom Poe tells us, were forcibly carried off from their barbarous region and sent, as presents to the king. This is reminiscent of the topographic point of many black slaves who were taken from Africa to the west at this time, in stage to further the endeavours of rich, greed y men at as low a cost a possible. The reality of what faced them ahead was a harsh, cruel life of constant work with no freedom or rights as a human being. However, it is surely wrong that one person should have freedom whilst another is an enslaved possession because they are different. This injustice is shown in the story by the Kings inability to accept Hop Frog as a person, in appearance he is different and so is treated as an object, a possession. Poe describes him as a monkey and a squirrel and suggest that Hop Frog is beggary for food crumbs from the royal table. The result this is that Hop Frog is shown to be like a begging animal which serves to ease the Kings conscience at annoying Hop Frog, if he is not a person then he does not have feelings.Both Hop Frog and Trippetta are dwarfed and Hop Frog is a cripple and Walks with an interjectional gait, which comes across as quite funny when it is further described as somewhere between a leap and a wriggle. Despite this Hop F rogs value was trebled in the eyes of the king and the king, who live only for jocose exploits Hop Frogs physical disabilities. It is therefor ironic that Hop Frog becomes the court fool which is a metaphor for the fact that he is laughed at by the King. The idea of Hop Frog being mocked for the way he walks is shocking and through this Poe shows the unease of society at the treatment of the slaves. The Kings immoral behaviour mirrors that of the slave traders in America and Eu circuit. Hop Frogs physical disability can be compared to the narrators madness.The endings of each story are hugely significant and it is perchance through the ending that we see the characters in their true light. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator has drifted in and out of her sane mind, she tells us once I always lock the door before I creep. Up until this point the narrator has not accepted that it is herself who is creeping, instead putting it down to the woman. But by the end, she is tellin g us how she is creeping round and round and round the room. Both a rope and an axe are mentioned, and John faints when he sees the destruction of the room and of his wife. It is quite possible that either of them are dead, however Gillman leaves the ending ambiguous. As well as amplifying the uncertainty of the woman, this could also be down to the fact that Gillman, despite her feminist views, was still a woman in the nineteenth century.She did she want to demonize her character by making her murder her husband no could she afford to openly state that the husband was literally overpowered by his wife. Gillman would not want to upset her feminist audience either, who would be outraged if the narrator killed herself due to the fact that she is such a powerful symbol of a woman wanting to rebel against her oppression. For her to commit suicide would dishearten a lot of these women as it would look as if suicide was the only way out. It seems as if this ending was right for the charac ter who despite becoming insane, is in the end happy and tells us with utter satisfaction I got out. whatsoever the reason for this ending, there is no doubt that despite the fact that this ending is truly horrific it also comes with a degree of relief. For with the narrators madness comes freedom, and more importantly, the woman finds her identity. Ironically this is not her former self, who is last named as Jane, but another person her insanity.Whilst The Yellow Wallpaper remains ambiguous, the ending of Hop frog is completely literal. Because eof the fact that Poe is a man, he can afford to take more liberties that perhaps Gillman was unable to take. He can openly humiliate and torture the king and the court, who represent the corrupt monarchy an important part of society, and appear to get away with this. Hop Frog is portrayed as demonic and evil. He achieves his freedom by savagely killing the King and his ministers. Under the guise of the stupid fool he tricks the king and his ministers into thinking that they are dressing up and covers them in tar and flax. The fact that Poe uses tar and Flax is of great significance as it is symbolic of mortification and punishment throughout history. Hop Frog then chained them together to become the eight chained orangutans. Hop frog shows himself to be very intelligent when, at the dwarfs suggestion, the keys had been deposited with him, in contrast with the stupidity of the King. Poe describes how the they are spite when the chains cause them to fall and stumble, The King and his Ministers have departed form mocking Hop Frog to being mocked themselves Hop Frog then suspends them from the ceiling at the ball and burns them alive.The fact that throughout the story Hop Frog never had the presence that the evil King had means that we would not immediately suspect Hop frog. When the grating preventive was first introduced, the reader did not think that it could be Hop Frog. However at the end when Hop Frog is per ched on the rope with the ruin king and ministers below him the grating noise came form the fang like teeth of the dwarf, who ground and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth. This is an insane a picture as that of the narrator. Hop frog rising up against the king is a complete reversal of roles, the oppressed has become the oppressor. However how is it possible that Poe can get away with this ending without his central character looking like the vengeful murder that he has become? It is perhaps because all-thorough the story, the treatment of Hop Frog as well as his bureau has been described as Horrendous, horrific and brutal, evoking incredible sympathy in the reader.As if this isnt reason enough, Poe threw in the added ploy of alcohol, which appears to demonize Hop Frog. therefor when Hop Frog commits this terrible act, he is immediately forgiven whilst we all make merry in the torture that the king and his ministers now incur. In the eyes of the reader justice has been done. Perhaps through his ending, Poe is forecasting what is to come, when the black slaves will go on up against their own white oppressors. It is therefor interesting that n order to truly punish and humiliate them, Hop Frog turns them first black. Like Gillman, Poe does not want to demonize the female character, leaving the question of Trippettas involvement up to the reader to answer.