Theme Comparison of "the Yellow Wallpaper" and "the Story of an Hour"

Theme Comparison of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Story of an Hour"

The first time reading these two stories would seem rather hard to follow or understand at first, until asking oneself questions about the situation and characters in the story. When reading the two stories, "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Story of an Hour", one would notice the many similarities between the two wives in each story. Although they are written by two different authors, and in two different time periods, they are actually very much alike. There are quite a few obvious similarities, such as both women have a physical or mental sickness that portrays them as being in a fragile and delicate condition, and that at first, both women appear to be happily married, until further into the story it becomes rather obvious that they're not happy in their marriage life.

Both women in the story have a health disorder. The narrator of "The Story of an Hour" states right away in the beginning that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition, which is why they are so careful to break the news to her about her husband's untimely death. Her sudden change of emotions multiple times within an hour, and seeing her husband alive at the end, causes her to die of heart disease in the end. First she feels shock and sadness, then guilt from a free feeling, then excitement and happiness from being free, and then when she sees her husband alive she experiences an extreme shock that kills her. As for the wife, constantly referred to as dear and darling, in "The Yellow Wallpaper", she says that her husband, John, told her she's not sick but yet, she has to go to the country for three weeks, and do nothing to get better. It states her sickness as nervousness. Her nervousness gets the better of her and she can't take care of herself, let alone her baby and husband. She's constantly exhausted and has to lie down much of the day. She starts hallucinating after becoming obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her room. First she see's someone in the wallpaper, and in the end she's the person in the wallpaper.

In the beginning of "The Story of an Hour", Mrs. Mallard is devastated in a sense to find out her husband has died. The narrator states that she "wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment" which would lead the reader to assume she is in mourning and feeling all alone in the world, now that her husband is gone. The fact that she's saddened by the sudden death of her husband, would lead one to believe she loved her husband and had a happy life with him. The narrator also described the woman's sadness as "the storm of grief" which shows the reader that she is overwhelmed with sorrow. Then she also states that "She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death" which tells the