From Silence To Awareness

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short novel of feminism, whose writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one of the most important authors, theorists, and sociologists in the first wave of the feminist movement. As an influential America feminist, Gilman throws herself into the movement of social improvement. Wide Sargasso Sea is regarded as the prequel of Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which rewrites the antagonist Berth Mason who does not have chance to express herself. Its author Jean Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica and her mother was a generation of Creole but her father was a Welsh doctor. Because of her mixed blood, she does not belong to either side of the two countries. She is so lonely and embarrassed living in the two totally different kinds of cultures. Therefore, her life experience, the loss of her identity and marginalization are the main themes in her works.The author of the thesis first discusses about the two heroines’miserable experiences in life. As wives, appendants or private properties, the females are at the lower position in marriage in the patriarchal society.Then the author writes about the two heroines’both double identities. The nameless narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper plays the role of John’s wife and a female writer. However, females in19th century are not allowed to do even decent jobs. Bearing children and looking after their families are the main duties of the general females. Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea has got dual identities of Mr. Rochester’s wife and one of the millions colonized people.Based on the previous analysis on the sufferings and dual identities, the author analyses the transformation of both female protagonists in the two stories. The nameless narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper obtains her goal as a rebel of male dominance society at high cost of being mad. Antoinette, who is on behalf of Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea, takes her own life by setting fire to the hall.This thesis discusses the essence of the two heroines’madness in both The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea by analyzing the similarities and differences which make both of them painful. Through the analysis and comparison, the thesis indicates that the women at that time longed for freedom and to shave off the chains binding them. Meanwhile, it presents the real living state of the females in19th century.The author of the thesis concludes that the two heroines’experience is extremely similar, but they resist in different ways. Simone de Beauvoir points out in her The Second Sex that one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Hence, this thesis will make a conclusion that madwoman is not born a madwoman, but becomes one.