The Yellow Wallpaper vs. The Birth Mark

‘’The Yellow Paper’’ and ‘’The Birth Mark’’

The stories ‘’Birth Mark’’ and ‘’Yellow Wallpaper’’ are very similar. In the story ‘’Birth Mark’’ the husband is a scientist who is obsessed with perfection. Most of his science projects have high expectations from him but none of them are successful. Being a man who likes things perfect and having a wife like Georgiana, Aylmer doesn’t like the mark on her face. He forces her to take it off by constantly asking her if she wanted to take it off.

Throughout the story the husband has more power than his wife and at the end of the story she died. ‘’Yellow Wallpaper’’ is very similar story, because the husband has the power over his wife as well. The wife is being under husband’s control. He forbids her from writing and just wants her to rest and do nothing. She’s also forced to live in the room that she didn’t pick herself.

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It’s normal that a person got crazy when she’s put in that situation. Both husbands were trying to help their wives but ended up making it worse by trying to prove that they can heal them their selves. The problem was the control over women.

Both stories make it seem that the husbands are in control of their wives. In Hawthorne’s story, the wife is held in a mental prison, because she can’t escape the fact that her husband will not accept her the way she is by wanting to remove the mark off her face.

I think that the husband Aylmer, being a scientist, also wanted to prove himself and his wife that he could remove the mark using science. You shouldn’t be experimenting on your wife by any means. ‘’Yellow Paper’’ is not quite the same. The wife is trapped in a ‘’prison’’, which is the room that she was put in. The mental prison for her would be the fact that the husband doesn’t want to let her write or stay in the house that she likes. I think that the reason why in both of these stories men have more power over women is because in that time period when authors wrote them, women didn’t have so much power and control in the family. Back in the day women didn’t have as much respect as they do now. It was a time when men thought of themselves as a higher class, that’s why there wasn’t a lot of women doctors or scientists. In both of the stories the men feel like they should have more power by telling their women what to do. Trying to help them and proving themselves that they are able to help their women, just made it worse.

In the story ‘’Yellow Wallpaper’’ the narration analyzes the life of a modern woman in society. The narrator shows that the men have privileges over women in the society. People picture most of the women in the kitchen and being a housewife. In the society it’s harder for women, because people don’t care what education they have. The point is that men within the society will not give women a listening ear. That is what’s happening in this story, because she doesn’t have the power to make her own decisions. She’s been placed in a room that she doesn’t want to stay at and she can’t do what she wants to do. In modern day society it’s completely different. Women are highly respected and they can make decisions in politics and become doctors. Most of the time modern society treats women and men equally. Women have outdone men in many fields. They also have good jobs and participating in politics as well. There are several female presidents in the world. The president of my country is a female and discrimination of women in Europe isn’t as big as it used to be back in time when these two stories were written.

The stories are different; in the ‘’Yellow Wallpaper’’ the wife is completely under husbands control. She is forced to stay at the room and her family doesn’t let her do what she enjoys doing. She is put in the situation that most of the ladies wouldn’t feel comfortable in even back in the day. She’s more in a physical control, and her husband is a physician so he’s trying to help her by making decisions for her. He doesn’t want to admit the fact that she has mental problems and he’s a doctor. ‘’Birth Mark’’ is a little bit different, because the scientist let’s the wife make a decision but the wife feels pushed by him and she gets sad because the husband doesn’t accept her the way she is. It’s a tough situation for her, because she loves him and wants to be perfect for him. He supposed to be supportive and love the wife without pressuring her and trying to prove what he can do as a scientist. Unfortunately both men in both stories fail to succeed at helping their wives. Both of the stories have a bad ending.

In conclusion, these stories are similar and different at the same time. ‘’The Yellow Wallpaper’’ and ‘’The Birth Mark’’ both have husbands who are trying to help their wives by pretty much controlling them and telling them what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. I find that very disturbing, because in a modern world women are highly respected by men or at least that’s how most males are being taught by their parents to treat women. Back in the day it was normalized for men to discriminate women by thinking that women are a lower class people, and do not have the same rights as men do. In both of these stories both husbands have good careers, one of them is a physician, the other is a scientist. Authors don’t tell the careers of their wives. It was easy to compare these two stories since they’re so similar and have only have very few differences.