Question

How does "The Yellow Wallpaper" contrast with "The Story of an Hour"?

Accepted Answer

There are many differences between the two stories. First, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is actually narrated by the protagonist, using a first-person subjective point of view (meaning that she narrates as the events are taking place, not afterward). "The Story of an Hour", on the other hand, is narrated by someone who is not a participant in the story, someone who knows the thoughts of feelings of the characters—a third-person omniscient narrator.  
Furthermore, the protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" has a mental illness, likely postpartum depression, and her condition degenerates into something far worse by the end of the story. The protagonist of "The Story of an Hour" does not have a mental illness; instead, she is believed to have a physical illness: heart disease.  
At the end of "The Yellow Wallpaper," the protagonist believes that she is the woman who she has freed from the wallpaper, and so her life will continue (though in a very different way).  At the end of "The Story of an Hour," the protagonist actually dies. Doctors believe that her shocked "joy" at seeing her husband alive killed her; however, it is more likely that she died of shocked disappointment that the freedom she thought she would have now is gone.

Answer

While on the surface, the stories are quite different, both Chopin's and Perkins's stories address the stultifying world for married women during the Gilded Age. In Chopin's brief story, the woman—Mrs. Mallard—has neither a happy nor tragic marriage from all accounts. The key is that she does not feel free until her husband is reportedly killed in a train accident. The hour between hearing of his death and seeing him cross the threshold seems to be the only time in her life in which she could imagine living for herself. The story's climax involves Mrs. Mallard's contemplation of a future of personal agency, ironically undermined in the last two paragraphs:

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

In Perkins's story, the husband, John, has a far more damaging effect on the wife. In her postpartum months, he treats her like a child, keeping her in a nursery/sanatorium. She is denied any agency at all, especially thinking, reading, and writing. Her inevitable mental decline manifests itself as a determined opposition—however secretively it is carried out—to John's "rest cure."
Both stories depend on revealing the normally silenced voice of the female protagonists, and while both are written in a realistic style, Perkins's is far more revealing of a consciousness sinking into depression and madness. Unlike Chopin's objective narrator, Perkins's first person voice guides the reader into this madness through progressively unreliable diary entries until the woman ultimately frees herself by allowing her mind to escape the limitations of her physical constraints.

Answer

Both "The Story of an Hour" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" deal heavily with women, their perceived place in society, and preconceived notions about their appropriate emotional reactions. The protagonists in both stories find themselves in a prison of sorts. The protagonist in "The Yellow Wallpaper" finds herself in a state of depression that her husband attempts to cure by isolating her in a room. Louise Mallard, on the other hand, has locked herself in her room because she feels she has been freed of the prison of her marriage. Both stories involve a vast amount of misconception on the part of other characters in regard to the protagonist's feelings, and this manifests itself in the characters's reactions to the climax of the action. In the case of the unnamed protagonist in the yellow room, a woman who was simply isolated to the point of delusion is considered to have always been mentally ill. The husband is shocked to find a development that he had been causing all along. In the case of Mrs. Mallard, the characters assume that she died from happiness upon seeing her husband alive, when in reality, it was shock from being immediately cast back in her metaphorical prison.

The Yellow Wallpaper Questions and Answers
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

How does "The Yellow Wallpaper" contrast with "The Story of an Hour"?

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