Contrast Paper free essay sample

Compare and Contrast Paper The Yellow wallpaper and A Doll’s house In class we discussed various stories that linked themselves in different perspectives. Some were related through plot and setting and others through characters and themes. Yet the same way that they were related, they also conflicted with each other. Just like the stories The Yellow Wallpaper and A Doll’s house. In both of these stories they show very similar characters that share the same idea and concept. The setting also contributes to the similarities that these stories share. Yet at the same time, they also differ in certain aspects of particular characters and setting. As mentioned before both of these stories have peculiar characters that are similar to each other. For instance Nora from A Doll’s house can be compared to the female character in The Yellow Wallpaper. Both of these females are limited to the power they have over themselves, they are both held over by their husband’s dictations. In A doll’s house we see the control that Nora’s husband has over her by the way he constantly calls her pet names such as â€Å"little squirrel† and â€Å"little bird†, names that already show the control over her as if she was an animal Not only does he treat her like a pet, he also controls her actions and even what she eats, for example Torvald says â€Å"My sweet tooth really didn’t make a little detour through the confectioner’s? (pg, 611) Here we see how he has become the ultimate dictator in her life and she has no control of what she even desires to eat. Torvald continues to push and handle Nora to the highest point, where she finally decides to leave him and her children behind. These same circumstances occur in A yellow wallpaper but in a different manner. Here the narrator’s husband, John, has taken control over her health. The narrator had suffered from post pardon depression and she believes that her treatment towards getting better is writing. But her husband John believes otherwise. He takes her to an isolated house and controls and observes her every move. He bands her from writing because he believes it worsen her â€Å"condition†. As a physician that John is, he begins to treat his wife more as a patient and controls her every move. If she wants the window open he shuts the window down and tells her that what she felt was a draught. John also says that the very worst thing she can do is to think about her â€Å"condition†. We continue to see this repetitive pattern over domination over and over again, even over the smallest things. Eventually, his stubbornness leads to the total melt down of his wife. They both wanted freedom and in returned they were both dependent of their husbands. Yet they also differ in certain aspects. In Nora’s case we can identify her; she has a name and gains an identity of her own towards the end of the story. As opposed to the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper, she is nameless and therefore more disconnected with her surroundings and herself. With Nora we see her come to life when she decided to leave her husband and her children behind, taking in consideration that the time set of the story was back in the 1800’s, where women still were powerless and depicted as objects, she did what she considered best for herself. She disregarded what the people might of say about her and did what her heart desired. Leaving everything behind including her children was something that she had to do for herself in order to become an individual. As for the narrator of the yellow wall paper, first she is given to name. We automatically know that she is very disconnected to herself; she does not possess an identity of her own and is blended into someone else’s ideas. She also does not do what she truly desires. She continues to listen to her husband’s orders and eventually lead her to insanity, into believing that a wallpaper was taking control over her. She took no action of her own to better herself and gain individuality, something that Nora did. Both characters also had different interests. Nora only wanted luxuries, money and materialistic items. She thought that money was the root to happiness and that through money she was able to obtain everything she wanted. Her husband was even aware of her desire for money, he even mentions â€Å"Torvald: Nora guess what I have here? Nora: Money! † (pg610). Here we see how he kept her caged through money, because that was Nora’s only desire. In contradiction with the narrator of The yellow Wall paper, her only desire what to write and to write only. Her health and her bettering dealt in her wanting to write but not being able to. In the story she mentions â€Å"Personally, I believe that congenital work, with excitement and chance, would do me good†. She honestly believes that writing can save her, but take no action in trying to create a chance. These stories also share another similarity which is the idea of the setting. Firstly, both of these stories are written around the same time period in the 1800’s. The time period itself was still around the time where women had no power or voice. As it is shown in both of the stories, these women had no power and had been limited to their husbands’ voice. They had no saying in their own homes or their own lives. Not only was the time period similar, they were also both strained into a particular place. Nora was compress in her own home; she became the doll in a dollhouse and remained constantly there. Her husband trapped her into his security space, where he locked her away like girls lock their dolls. As well as the narrator from The yellow wallpaper, she was also kept held at the one place her husband had placed her, she wasn’t allowed to go or do anything without his consent. The difference in setting is that Nora instead of staying in that particular place that constricted her from being herself, she actually left away from it. She didn’t let that home take the best of her and kept her trap. Instead she fled from it. Opposing the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper where the house was part of the reason for her insanity, she decided to stay there and unfortunately that became her disgrace. For this reasons, I believe that both The Yellow Wallpaper and A Doll’s house can be compared to. They both have similarities and distinctions between the main characters. The difference in character and theme are very obvious and stated.