Great examples of oppression is shown in the story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. History has shown that women were considered second-class citizens for much of the 19th century, oppressed by the opposite sex for being "weak". This oppression is not uncommon to literature. In this story the author uses the protagonist also the narrator to portray the repression of women during this time period. The anonymous narrator begins the story by telling of her husband and their summer home. The narrator lack of freedom are symbolized through the yellow wallpaper. When the wallpaper is introduced toward the beginning of the story, its color is described in the story as "repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight" (Gilman 317). This quote explains to describe the wallpaper, give of feeling for the wallpaper that is almost sickening and a sense can be representative of the narrator's illness. As his wife's physician, he puts his wife under the rest cure. Cure prohibits the patient from doing any form of work. The inability of the narrator to exercise her mind only seems to make her more ill. She couldn't' receive any feelings of freedom.
"The Story of an Hour" displays female rejection of the norms of society. This story is by feminist writer in the late 1800's, Kate Chopin who has challenged the political norms of society. The story begins with a woman going through the stages of grief for her husband's death. The wife Louise Mallard, this was awakening of a new life. This new life is cutted in short as the information turns false. However at the moment when she found out that her husband passed away she cried as a normal wife. But after she whispered to herself "Free! Body and soul free!" (Chopin 307). Kate Chopin reveals that even the desire for love is trumped by the need for freedom and independence, through her use of precise diction and symbolism. Mrs. Mallard knows now that she only has to live with herself. She does not have to make anyone happy but herself. She now living her life the way she wants she is not going to be chained to her husband. However when she finds out that her husband is not dead, she collapses to the floor and dies of what the doctor later says was of a heart disease or was it a broken heart knowing that her freedom had now been taken away from her in a matter of an hour.
In both stories, it is seen in the stereotypical roles of women that existed in that time period, and in a woman who was not happy playing the role of subservient housewife. Martin Luther King said "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed" this quote explains that people who seek to oppress do so in order to retain power and to prevent others from being empowered. If you wish to free yourself from this kind of oppression then you must demand that freedom and fight for it. That does not have to imply violence, that can imply the legal system, protesting, campaigning. If someone does not want you to be empowered then you must empower yourself. In the examples from the stories that I've chosen, both characters were very thirsty of freedom. All they needed was freedom.
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