"A Rose for Emily" and "The Yellow Wallpaper"

In “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the two female protagonists are confronted with isolation because of internal and external effects.

The woman, Miss Emily Grierson, in “A Rose for Emily” is isolated from the outside world by her own choice. After her father's death she was rarely seen out. Then, “after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (p. 202). I think part of the reason she stayed in her house and away from people after her father's death is because she was a Grierson and she couldn't keep herself up to the expectations of noblesse oblige. She knew she was constantly judged and watched by her neighbors in town. Also, after Homer disappeared she never went outside and I feel that is because when she was home, he was with her in the house. Though he was dead because she poisoned him, he was always with her.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman who narrates the story is suffering from temporary nervous depression. Her husband, John, who is a physician, tells her she needs to rest in order to get better. Whenever the unnamed woman wants to do anything her husband tells her she can't and must rest by herself. This forces her to be stuck by herself in their large bedroom with yellow wallpaper that drives her insane. The illness she actually had was postpartum depression, since she had just given birth to a baby boy. She even says, referring to her son, “and yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous” (p. 369). Thus proving that the reason she is sick is from postpartum depression and not just a temporary nervous depression. After being isolated from the real world and stuck in the same room for a couple months she beings to see thing. Before she hated the ugly wallpaper, but then it started to fascinate her. She wanted to watch the wallpaper all the time in the bedroom. She was really isolated for her depression, but in turn became isolated because of her isolation.