A Jury Of Her Peers Analysis

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Life was restrictive for women in the 1800s and early 1900s. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Susan Glaspell were two progressive women who believe in women obtaining more freedoms and rights. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a horrifying short story about a woman steadily descending into madness from the doings of her husband. Glaspell wrote, “A Jury of Her Peers” which is a short story concerning themes of crime and justice as detectives and their wives investigate the house of a crime scene where the wife is the prime suspect. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Jury of Her Peers” represents the typical oppression women faced that could lead to insanity using significant themes, symbolism, and irony; the authors wrote employing their current day…show more content…
The narrator eventually starts to notice a change in her psyche and becomes self-aware that she is still not feeling better; however, when she voices these opinions to her ever-loving husband, he says it is quite the contrary, “You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you” (652). John’s patronizing behavior towards his wife creates a worse situation than before because after the conversation the narrator has finally been convinced she is getting better. At this point, the narrator is wholly cut off from reality; her efforts of reasoning have been futile, so she attempts no more endeavors to prevent the madness that has steadily been creeping in. Visions she sees have escalated into full-blown delusions. She watches a woman in the wallpaper and at the end of the story rips at it an attempt to free her. The hysteria reaches its peak as readers discover that the narrator thinks she was the woman trapped in the wallpaper and is now free. The symbolism is prominent here as the woman in the wallpaper is the woman she views as

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