This essay examines two stories – “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “Death by Landscape” by Margaret Atwood. In the paper, attention will be given to the comparison and the contrast of the protagonists’ isolation from the world and the people around them. Despite the difference in their life stories and conditions, as well as temperaments of the main characters, the essence of their psychological state is the same.
Something that cannot be perceived by the people around them, being beyond rational thinking, becomes a cause of the misunderstanding of the main characters’ feelings. For the detailed study of the issue, several aspects of the living conditions and mental attitudes of the protagonists will be explored. This will then lead to the understanding that, while the two protagonists of the stories seem to possess different temperaments, they both have the same reason for their alienation. This reason is their perception of life and the presence of alternative reality, inhabited by the unmanifested existence, in their minds.
First, the nature and the psychological background of the characters of both stories should be examined. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the person on whose behalf the story is written struggles from the continuous disenchantment and tiredness of any daily activity. Together with her husband, a “physician of high standing” and an extremely self-controlled person, she rents a room in a countryside house (Gilman 3). For her, the wallpaper in the room is the main reason for the queerness and mysteriousness of the place; she hates it, but, at the same time, she cannot stop “following its pattern” (Gilman 9). Finally, she finds a strange, hidden life in the wallpaper, manifested in the “creeping” woman who seems to step out from the paper and permeate all the surroundings.
In the “Death by Landscape,” Lois, the main character, collects the paintings which, in her eyes, carry the reflection of her past and, particularly, memories of her childhood friend, Lucy, who died jumping off the cliff.
At that time, Lois was mistakenly suspected to be the reason for Lucy’s death, which was the cause of her inner disconnection with the world of people. “For the rest of her life, she has caught people watching her in this way,” but it is not only this claim that made her feel detached from society and her own life (Atwood 116). Similar to the protagonist of the first story, she was tired and used to find herself more often in fantasies than in common reality. Lois was “living not one life but two: her own, and another, shadowy life” that would have happened “if Lucy had not stepped sideways” (Atwood 116). Thus, both protagonists are absorbed by their imagination, are disinterested in ordinary life, and are alienated from other people.
Second, the temperaments of the two characters have to be observed. Here, a difference, though not sharp, appears. The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a self-reflective person of an artistic nature (probably a writer); at the moment, she is forcefully detached from any activity by her husband, who considers it harmful for her health. Her depression, as she concludes in the end, is to a large extent due to such a domestic way of life, where there is nothing to catch her attention except her thoughts and fantasies (Gilman 20).
On the other hand, in “Death by Landscape,” Lois remembers her childhood activities in the summer camp, where she “learned to swim well and sail, and paddle a canoe… ride a horse or play tennis” (Atwood 101). Although according to her description, she was never feeling comfortable to perform “required cheerfulness” and demonstrate “enjoying herself,” after a few years, she found no other way than reconcile with the situation and become “an old hand” (Atwood 103). Thus, the temperaments of the two characters seem to be of different natures. Yet, both of them experience a similar state of being self-absorbed and not adapted to the usual way of life.
The similarity in the approach of the two personalities is manifested in their searching for psychological support not in people but in the world beyond the ordinary. The protagonist in “The Yellow Paper,” is the woman from the paper, who scares and, at the same time, releases her. In her altered by illusions mind, the main character identifies herself with the woman helping her to step out of the paper’s landscape: “I have got out at last… you can’t put me back” (Gilman 19).
Finally, she is out of the pattern, out of the frame which people locked her within. Similarly, in her childhood, the woman in “Death by Landscape” found the support of her friend, “always perfect” Lucy, who “did not care about the things she didn’t know,” whereas Lois herself did (Atwood 105). That, probably, was the pattern of behavior that Lois wanted to adopt, identifying herself with a friend as her “sister, or even twin” (Atwood 105). Lucy’s demise meant for Lois the loss of the world where she was a part of something exceptional and “always perfect,” as Lucy seemed for her to be.
As it has been demonstrated, the protagonists of the two stories have similarities in their perception of life despite diverse living conditions and their way of behavior. It seems, however, that the difference is not too significant, and both characters have the same self-reflective, introverted nature, finding support in something beyond ordinary reasoning. Both protagonists experience similar alienation from the world and the people around them. Probably, the reason for this is the presence of alternative landscapes in their minds, where they find themselves to be perfect and where the borders of reality and imagination and life and death begin to fade.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, edited by Ann J. Lane, University of Virginia Press, 1999, pp. 3-20.
Atwood, Margaret. “Death by Landscape.” Wilderness Tips, Doubleday, 1991, pp. 97-118.