Jovanna Pulido De La Rosa

Mrs. O’Keefe
1/17/20

A Rose For Emily​ is a story about a woman that lived in a colonial-type town that was being restructured which
caused the people in power to seek her out for not paying her taxes in the beginning. The real story starts when she
meets a man after her father has passed but because that man is not able to replicate her feelings for him she resorts
to an extreme method to restrain him. ​The Yellow Wallpaper​ is very different but similar in the way that they are
restraining someone. In the story the woman moves into a house with her husband because of the good it will do for
her health but in the end, the treatment that was supposed to help her ended up driving her mad.

In ​The Yellow Wallpaper​, the narrator states that “Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady
spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But
nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.” In this
interpretation, the narrator has of what the “woman” in the wallpaper is doing she is able to reflect how she feels.
That when she is being seen she is normal but when no one is looking she desperately tries to escape with no avail.
So she ends up joining all the other women that have failed to escape the control of the “wallpaper”. She also states
that “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys
it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!” Through this
interaction with the wallpaper, the narrator is able to free herself from its clutches. Despite its desperate attempts to
adhere itself to her again she continues to pry it off her to not let it win her over. So that she doesn’t become like the
wallpaper’s previous victims that were not able to free themselves. She states that “But John says if I feel so, I shall
neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself-- before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.”
John was trying to make her feel better by saying that she could ignore how she is supposed to be but that just made
her control herself more in order to not let herself go. As a result of her controlling herself further, she has caused
herself harm in order to satisfy him since he thinks that he is doing such a great job at care for her. She also states
that “but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and
habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies”. He is very
controlling of how she should control herself just based on what he thinks is best for her but never once considered
what her opinion was on the matter he just said it and expected it to be accepted and followed because he is a doctor
so he knows best. The restraints placed upon the narrator were a result of the influence of someone close to her just
like how it was for Emily.

In ​A Rose For Emily​, the narrator states that “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and
such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a
spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the
back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated;
even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.”
Through the imagery used in the framed image of them, it can be seen that there was a very controlling relationship
between them in the way that the father stood in front of his daughter with a whip as if making a point that people
were not to get close to her. Her father was controlling of her involvement with anyone outside of their family which
lead to her never having a romantic relationship with anyone. The narrator states that “‘I want arsenic.’ The druggist
looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. ‘Why, of course,’ the druggist said.
‘If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.’ Miss Emily just stared at
him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and
wrapped it up.” This was after the thing with Homer started to crumble since he wasn’t the type to marry and caused
people to wonder whether she would kill herself with it. That was unlikely considering the drive that she had in
order to get the poison from the druggist that didn’t want to give it to her without an explanation that shows that she
wasn’t going to use it on herself. The narrator also states that “because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men,
and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man.” This
reaffirms the fact that Homer is not likely to get married because of the fact he likes to fun too much. Which would
push Emily to take drastic measures in order to keep him by her side considering the previous event of her
purchasing poison with an unknown purpose. The narrator stated that “Then we noticed that in the second pillow
was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust
dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.” Through this, you are able to see that in the
end, she ended up using the poison on Homer in order to keep him by her side. Though the way that she kept him is
quite grotesque but considering how she was brought up it could be considered normal since it was previously stated
in the story that the family was crazy and her father was controlling. This all translated to her going all the way to
kill him in order to restrain him by her side even if it meant killing him in the process.

The theme that is present in ​A Rose For Emily​ and ​The Yellow Wallpaper​ is the theme of control. In ​The Yellow
Wallpaper​ through the character of the husband and the interactions the narrator had with them it is possible to see
that they bother imposed on her. The way that they pressure her to be a certain way and restrain her to keep her like
other women. In ​A Rose for Emily,​ the character of Emily’s father shaped her to be the way she was because of how
controlling he was of her she ended up like her father in wanting to keep the person she loved with her. But when
things didn’t go according to plan with him staying with her she resorted to a permanent solution that would make
him stay with her forever since even death didn’t part them. The way control was manifested was different but in
both, there was control that was used to make a person to do as they wanted in one it caused them to be mad and in
the other they were already mad. For the narrator in ​The Yellow Wallpaper​ ended up going mad in the end because
of the holding back that she had to do since her husband thought that what he was doing was the best for her but in
the end it only did her harm. Those things that were supposed to help her recover from what he thought she had only
aggravated her condition that could have simply been postpartum depression into her losing her sanity completely.
As for Emily she also not in the best mental condition consider how she grew up with her father. She was in a
desperate state after her father died consider that she had never been in a relationship so when it turned out that
Homer wasn’t to marry her. That must have been the last straw which caused her to just go for when the opportunity
arose for her to keep him with her even if he wasn’t willing to stay.