Gender Oppression and Liberation in Flauberts A Simple Heart and Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper - Essay Example

December 7, Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Gender Oppression and Liberation in Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” To be a woman is a tyranny, if all she lives for is to be a man’s woman. Mary Wollstonecraft argues in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects that men and women by nature are equal because they both have souls that have equal qualities, so they must enjoy similar basic human rights and freedoms. She asserts that women are also not frivolous and too emotional by nature, but by nurture, specifically because access to quality education and the same level and quality of social and physical activities are barred from women. A Vindication can be used to understand the causes and effects of gender oppression in two stories, Flaubert Gustave’s “A Simple Heart” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Gustave shows Félicité’s life as a woman, which Gilman also demonstrates in the life of her story’s narrator. These female characters are protagonists, not only in their lives, but in a man-dominated society. Wollstonecraft argues that society oppresses women through preparing them for marriage that breaks them mentally and isolates them socially, through training them solely for their traditional gender roles and responsibilities, and through turning them into men’s slaves and playthings. The primary problem, she continues, in developing women with weak minds is that they acquire a poor sense of reason that makes them susceptible to mental and emotional breakdowns which harm them and society as a whole. Wollstonecraft asserts that women can liberate themselves from oppression through self-expression and self-reflection which will give them control over their lives. Wollstonecraft asserts that marriage is an institution that usually oppresses women because it breaks them mentally. She first laments the fact that, during her time, women’s main preoccupation was to get married. She says: “…meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves—the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage” (1.12). Instead of studying and honing their talents, women’s only lifelong course is to be prepared for marriage. What is more disconcerting is that most marriages are bad for women’s inner mental development. Laura Brace notes that Wollstonecraft argues that marriage breaks women mentally because society expects them to be dedicated only to the goal of satisfying their husband’s needs and following their orders as part of their “natural” duties (435). Wollstonecraft talks about the tyranny of being married to men who do not want their wives to improve their minds: “… I cannot avoid feeling the most likely compassion for those unfortunate females who are broken off from society, and by one error torn from all those affections and relationships that improve the heart and mind” (4.66). She detests marriages that hinder women from being fully-thinking human beings. Madame Aubain in “A Simple Heart,” for instance, appears to only love her husband the most than her own growth as a person and her children because, when he died, she mainly “spent her day, sitting in a wicker easy chair by the window” (Flaubert 2209). Flaubert could be saying that she has lost her desire to live life to the fullest by highlighting a household activity that dominates her life. Wollstonecraft would call it oppressive to have such an empty life that, without a husband, a woman no longer finds happiness in nurturing her mental faculties as a widow. Another example of oppression happens when wives follow only what their husbands want them to think about and do through an oppressive marriage that can be found in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The narrator expresses her ideas with John, her husband, about the house where she stays temporarily to cure her anxiety issues. She notes that she gets angry at him for not listening to her stories and notions about the house and her illness, but she lets him have his way all the time: “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” (Gilman 2345). As a wife, she must submit to the full control of her husband over her mind and heart through silence and immobility (Fanghui 10). As a wife, she does not even have control over her ideas and emotions. The image of her silence and stillness in the face of her husband is an image of complete gender oppression through marriage. Marriage also breaks women socially by limiting their social interactions that can help exercise their minds. As mentioned earlier, Wollstonecraft describes marriages that isolate women from other meaningful social relationship, “those affections and relationships that improve the heart and mind” (4.66). She believes that women should be allowed to have male and female friendships outside of marriage, and to not focus on female-female social circles only. She says: “To say the truth women are, in general, too familiar with each other, which leads to that gross degree of familiarity that so frequently renders the marriage state unhappy” (Wollstonecraft 7.24). She could be referring to female friends who deal more with sharing marriage woes than improving their mental faculties. Wollstonecraft underscores the importance of socialization to women’s cognitive and social development, something that not all marriages during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries promote. Many husbands control their wives through curtailing their social lives. John in “The Yellow Wallpaper” limits his wife’s exposure to other visitors without considering if this may actually be good for her. The narrator notes that John wants to wait until she is “really well” before they can have “Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit” because he would not let her have “those stimulating people about now” (Gilman 2347). She calls them “stimulating,” which means that she finds them good for her strained nerves, but John would rather have his way and not let them visit her. Her marriage embodies a prison where husband is the jail warden who holds the keys to the outside world. Women need meaningful social interactions to improve their minds, but marriage can be a huge obstacle to their inner growth by delimiting their social activities. Besides social oppression, Wollstonecraft argues that many women do not develop their reason because society conditions them to focus on fulfilling traditional gender roles and responsibilities. She uses “Chinese bands” as the symbol of how a patriarchal society ties up women to ignorance and frivolities, since they are only supposed to serve men and their children, and not become independent thinkers and doers. She says: “To preserve personal beauty, womans glory! The limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live, whilst boys frolic in the open air” (Wollstonecraft 3.12). She depicts that women are superficial, meaning they focus on physical beauty and wealth, because society nurtures them to be frivolous. Chinese bands represent the handcuffs of social mores and expectations that bind many women to low-level thinking. Society imprisons women as daughters and wives inside their homes for them to put in their right domesticated domestic place. As an example of imprison by marriage, John does not want his wife to think at all too, a sign of his power through his profession and gender. He wants her to be a dutiful wife and to do exactly as she is told. The narrator likes writing because it could be her form of catharsis as an imprisoned wife in an unequal marriage, but she cannot write openly for “[John] hates to have [her] write a word” (Gilman 2346). She cannot nurture her mind because she cannot even freely write what is on her mind. John controls her by using his profession as a “physician,” while his wife is a homemaker, and by imposing his will as a man. He wants her to be his “blessed little goose” (Gilman 2347), a pet to his desires. This example proves that marriage imprisons women’s minds, in order for them to pursue only their traditional gender roles and responsibilities. Another example of keeping women ignorant in order for them to support the patriarchal status quo comes from the life of Félicité. Her name signifies what she is supposed to feel as a woman- to feel felicity in living for her gender roles and responsibilities. Flaubert makes it clear that, as a woman, she should feel thankful for doing everything that society says women must do: “She received four pounds a year. For that she was cook and general servant, and did the sewing, washing, and ironing; she could bridle a horse, fatten poultry, and churn butter-and she remained faithful to her mistress, unamiable as the latter was” (2209). This sentence mentions women’s traditional tasks inside and outside their homes. They are basically servants in their homes and societies. Félicité does everything for merely four pounds and the tone of the writing is that she should feel happy for it. She must not mind her unfriendly boss too because she is a woman and women are supposed to be passive and persevering. In addition, Félicité’s faithfulness to her mistress is an analogy to a wife’s faithfulness to her husband. Félicité is the symbolic wife in the household because she does wifely roles and responsibilities. Besides signifying her gender roles and responsibilities, Félicité’s name is also ironic because her life is far from being full of felicity, or joy, because by living only for her feminine obligations, she has lost her opportunity to live also for herself. Her mistress’ children are her children already. She “she carried them on her back like a horse” (Flaubert 2211). The symbolism is that, as a woman, she is a beast of burden. She is society’s beast and she must carry her burden for the rest of her gender for the rest of her life. Another example of her ironic life of servitude can be seen from the symbolism of the bull attacking her. She nearly dies from trying to save her mistress and her children. The bull that almost “gored” her (Flaubert 2212) stands for society’s vicious treatment of women. Society wants women who are martyrs, martyrs who do not have any real life that they can call their own apart from the life of their gendered identities. Félicité should actually be called Misery. Wollstonecraft then explains that many men desire to keep women ignorant and unreasonable because they want slaves and playthings. She argues that numerous men do not desire for society to develop strong women because they want weak-willed and weak-minded ones whom they can control for their whims and desires: “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing” (Wollstonecraft 2.21). Some men think that they benefit from perpetuating a system where women are under their heels. In “A Simple Heart,” Félicité represents all women who are slaves. Flaubert characterizes her as the ideal woman in the dictionary of a patriarchal society. She is “with her silence, straight figure, and precise movements she was like a woman made of wood, and going by clockwork” (Flaubert 2209). The imagery of silence and straight figure indicates a slave’s demeanor. She must not have a voice or any active and free movement. Her precise movements and the simile of a “woman made of wood, and going by clockwork” underscore women’s slavery conditions. Men are the sculptors of women and they expect them, as their things, to do everything “by clockwork.” For sure, mothers train women to be women in the traditional sense, but they all operate in the context of a patriarchal system that perpetuates the oppressed identity of womanhood. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is also a plaything and a slave. She is a plaything that entertains her husband. John mocks her by laughing at her questions about the house and “[scoffing] openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Gilman 2345). He shows that his framework as a man of reason is more superior to a woman’s emotions and reason by treating her as a toy that must not and cannot think. In addition, she is a slave to her husband. He has instilled a slavery mentality in her where she has internalized her inferiority: “I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more” (Gilman 2346). She thinks that because John is a doctor and her husband, he has the right to control her and that she should be grateful for her enslaved life. The idea of a “schedule prescription” is an analogy to women’s gender prescriptions too. Wollstonecraft is right that many men maintain women’s ignorance because it reinforces the patriarchal system that serves their interests. By conditioning women to be slaves and playthings, Wollstonecraft asserts that the world will be worse off because they cannot control their emotions without a sound sense of reason and this is bad for women and society as a whole. She argues that women who do not become thinkers become more susceptive to emotionality. She asserts that the main goal of education is to create strong minds: “By individual education, I mean, for the sense of the word is not precisely defined, such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses, form the temper, regulate the passions as they being to ferment, and set the understanding to work before the body arrives at maturity” (Wollstonecraft 2.9). Without strong minds, women are vulnerable to emotional and mental anxieties. Furthermore, Wollstonecraft argues that uneducated women are the bane of society too. She says that women who are not thinkers cannot raise children properly: “Besides, how should a woman void of reflection be capable of educating her children?” (Wollstonecraft 5.49). In the absence of quality education, women cannot attain their inner development and they also cannot meaningfully contribute to social development. “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows that some women lose their minds because society barred them from improving their mental abilities. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” describes the wallpaper that captures her unstable state of mind. The sordid state of the wallpaper reflects the sordid state of her mentality. The wallpaper is “dull enough to confuse the eye in following… [has] lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide-plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 2346). The wallpaper is as dull as she feels her mind is because society has not allowed her to sharpen her reason. As a result, she has become emotionally unstable. She sees curves committing suicide that foreshadow what she wants to do with her miserable life. Her mind is broken because her reason is ill-formed. Furthermore, the narrator attributes negative emotions to the color of the wallpaper because it signifies her social status as a woman. It has a “repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (Gilman 2346). Gilman has subverted the usual meaning of yellow’s gayness and turned it into something that women feel. These women are the wallpaper because their minds and souls have turned into yellowish pus due to the cancer of poor inner growth and development. The sunlight is society that does not turn to give them nurture. Society is to be blamed for mentally ill women because they are ill due to lack of access to quality education where they are free to grow as human beings. Félicité is also similar to the narrator who has mentally broken down because of poor rational abilities. She has lived her life in service of others, the typical woman’s lifelong story, but she does not feel love and appreciation in return. She is as worthless as Victor for Madame Aubain. Félicité tries to calm down Madame Aubain for not getting a letter from her daughter, as she compares the latter’s situation to her who have not gotten a letter from her nephew, Victor too, who works at a ship and left for America. Aubain finds this analogy sickening and says: “I was not thinking of him! And what is more, its absurd! A scamp of a cabin-boy-what does he matter? ... whereas my daughter…why, just think!” (Flaubert 2217). In this case, Félicité’s social status and gender combine to denigrate her as an inferior human being. The family she loves with all her heart does not respect and love her as an equal. In addition, because she has not nurtured her mind and because she has no real friends and family who love her as a person, Félicité loses her mind. If the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” sees women in the wallpaper as part of her hallucinations, Félicité also hallucinates that her dead stuffed parrot is God: “They were linked in her thoughts; and the parrot was consecrated by his association with the Holy Ghost, which became more vivid to her eye and more intelligible” (Flaubert 2225). Her hallucination signifies her mental breakdown. Moreover, it may suggest that the bird is her mental growth. As a woman, she has lived an empty life because she does not experience mental development without access to education and meaningful relationships, which is part of women’s “arrested development,” as Thelma R. Hall calls it (4). The bird is her and all women like her. They are dead and stuffed to be pretty things to look at. They are dead even while they are alive because an unexamined life is an empty life. Despite these sorrowful conditions of women, Wollstonecraft asserts that women must find freedom through self-expression and self-reflection that will give them control over their lives. She does not want a society where women rule over men: “This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves” (Wollstonecraft 4.34). She wants women to have the reason to control their emotions and to find meaningful spaces of growth and expression. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” goes mad, but in her madness, she finds freedom. Her plunge to insanity might seem like she is a hopeless case, but it can also be argued as her flight for freedom. At the end of the story, she does not open the door to her husband. This act alone signifies her autonomy because she does not follow orders from her husband anymore. At the same time, she finds independence in crawling with the imaginary women in the wallpaper. When John and Jane have broken into her room, the narrator says: “Ive got out at last…in spite of you and Jane. And Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back!”(Gilman 2355). Her pulling off the paper is the symbolic tearing away out from the social box that imprisons her. She asserts that she will not go back because she is already free and independent. She has determined the causes of her imprisonment and has resolved to express and attain her freedom. Félicité also chooses freedom through breaking away from her womanly responsibilities. She dies alone without thinking anymore of the pains of losing loved ones who did not love her as a human being. Her last moments signify self-examination that frees her from her pain and frustrations. She dies by choosing to be as free as a bird by being one with the Holy Spirit: “The beats of her heart lessened one by one, vaguer each time and softer, as a fountain sinks, an echo disappears; and when she sighed her last breath she thought she saw an opening in the heavens, and a gigantic parrot hovering above her head” (Flaubert 2228). C.H. Wake calls this as the “final sanctification” of Félicité’s life through accepting God in her soul (96). She gives in to her inner peace that introduces her to a life of love and acceptance that real life has not given her. These women finally found the space and peace to control their destinies. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman talks about the drawbacks of traditional notions of womanhood that the stories “A Simple Heart” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” supported. When society sees women as secondary citizens, where they do not have the same rights and freedoms to cognitive, social, and physical development, they can become as unfulfilled and unhappy as the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Félicité. Furthermore, when they live unexamined lives, they lose reason that guides their emotions and rationality. They can become emotionally unstable and mentally insane. Nevertheless, Wollstonecraft believes that women can break free from their imprisonment through self-reflection and self-expression. They can grow as human beings in spite of these social limitations. Moreover, women today no longer have rest cures but many still feel the burden of traditional roles and responsibilities, either because they have patriarchal cultures, or because they have more rights and freedoms, but not liberation from social views that they must do their domestic duties first and foremost. Hence, A Vindication continues to ask women and society to examine their lives and to build a more egalitarian society. Works Cited Brace, Laura. “Not Empire, but Equality: Mary Wollstonecraft, the Marriage State and the Sexual Contract.” Journal of Political Philosophy 8.4 (2000): 433-455. Print. Fanghui, Wang. “Trapped and Silenced: Claustrophobic Fear in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Handmaids Tale.” Studies in Literature & Language 5.2 (2012): 10-15. Print. Flaubert, Gustave. “A Simple Heart.” The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and David L. Pike. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 2207-2228. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1892. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and David L. Pike. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 2344-2355. Print. Hall, Thelma R. “Charlotte Perkins Gilmans "The Yellow Wallpaper": A Surrealistic Portrayal of a Womans Arrested Development.” ERIC, 1994. ED370113. Print. Wake, C.H. “Flauberts Search for an Identity: Some Reflections on ‘Un Cœur Simple.’” The French Review 44.2 (1971): 89-96. Print. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Boston: Peter Edes, 1792. Web. 17 Nov. 2014. . Read More