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Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clement suggest that “Either woman is passive or she does not exist. What is left for her is unthinkable, un-thought.” No woman is passive in either Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Kate Chopin’s work. In Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wall-paper,” and Chopin’s “At the ‘Cadian Ball,” “The Storm,” and “Story of an Hour,” the women characters and the authors struggle to move past passive roles, allocated to them by a male dominated society.

Before the 20th century, men defined women’s roles. All women were affected and suffered. Men were responsible for an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. The women in Gilman and Chopin’s work are actively held back by patriarchal ideals. The medical profession’s godlike attitude in “The Yellow Wall-paper” exhibits the arrogance from men that pushes the un-named woman character’s desire to have more stimuli. She writes, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus -- but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Gilman 833). John is the very essence of what is holding her back. She knows what is needed to climb out of her depression and perhaps her postpartum, but it is the male thought that is forcing her to live her life as a mindless body.

Mrs. Mallard, from “The Storm,” has a similar dilemma, but she is faced with the stimulus of independent thinking after she believes her husband is passed. Chopin narrates, “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (“Story of an Hour” 2). Unlike in “The Yellow Wall-paper,” Mrs. Mallard does not have to fight patriarchy to regain the consciousness in her life. She is faced with it head on. Chopin gave Calixta, in “At the “Cadian Ball” and “The Storm,” the pants in her marriage with Bobinôt. She is presented as a strong woman that makes up her own mind. This is shown when she accepted Bobinôt’s hand in marriage and most defiantly when she let Alcèe Laballière into her home and among other places. Calixta may have entered her marriage with a disappointed heart, as a mindless body, but regained it for a few moments to take what she desired.

Each woman is subjected to an ideal, all of which dictate them to operate in an “acceptable” fashion. The desire to live within their own boundaries, to reach outside the ideal, allows the women to discover an outlet to an independent mind and soul. Calitxa swears in French and cheats on her husband. Mrs. Mallard finds pleasure and ultimately death in the freedom and suggestion of being a widow. The unnamed woman, Mrs. Gilman presents, tears through her mental wall-paper and elevates her mind to a higher plane of thinking.

Chopin and Gilman give their characters few social options. They can live by the established conventional feminine position or risk the taboo and find a new elevated position of femininity. In Chopin’s “Story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard has little choice as to what would become of her. In a morbid way, “fate” chose her to live by the established convention. Although the death of her husband was ultimately freeing, her death that followed served as a demonstration to men of the frailty of women. Chopin tops the display off with a dose of irony with the doctor’s diagnosis that Mrs. Mallard died of “the joy that kills” (“Story of an Hour” 2). If Mrs. Mallard were given the opportunity to live longer then perhaps she may have taken the latter.

Calixta and the un-named woman opt to take the risk. The nameless woman in “The Yellow Wall-paper,” although desperately trying to live by convention, appears to go insane. She reflects,

’I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope--you don't get me out in the road there!’ I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard…. ‘I've got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!‘ (Gilman 843-4)

By Gilman giving the un-named woman a reflective, yellow prison and a husband that pays little attention to her, she gives the woman an exit from the norm. Calixta in “At the ‘Cadian Ball” and “The Storm” takes a different path. Born as an outsider, she had little motive to follow the established convention. Her exploits with Alcèe Laballière are wrong, but Chopin manipulates the reader to accepting and understanding that what had happened is tolerable due to Calixta and Alcèe’s un-resigned passions for each other.

Neither writer can make fiction that exists outside of patriarchy. Gilman and Chopin are strictly confined by this phalliocentric system and their stories would not exist without it. Both Gilman and Chopin write about women confined within a male dominated world. Without this barrier, their female characters would not have conflict therefore there would be no fiction to write. The voice of patriarchy, both deliberate and unintentional, finds its way into the fiction of both writers. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper,” the male voice inadvertently speaks through the un-named lead woman character and the sister in-law, Jennie. On several occasions the woman and her sister in-law make reference to the woman’s brother and husband’s thoughts on her “nervous illness” (Gilman 883). The woman agrees with these thoughts, for the most part, until she discovers herself within the paper. The discovery allows her to step past the male world and find a more complicated space within her self. In “The Yellow Wall Paper” the voice of patriarchy had to be established so that the female character is able to transcend past it. Without the voice there would be no conflict. In Chopin’s work, the male role is expressed through southern society and principles. Married or not, women in the 1800’s were relentlessly confined by the roles dictated to them by society. Chopin’s characters, although different in social class, are both stuck in marriages that their livelihoods are dependant on. Mrs. Mallard and Calixta clearly did not marry for love. Mrs. Mallard in “Story of an Hour” reflects that she loved her husband- sometimes and Calixta accepted Bobinôt’s proposal impulsively (2, “At the ‘Cadian Ball” 628).

Gilman and Chopin are not able to control the patriarchal influence. Both women live and write in a male dominated world. They have no other choice but to write in the language dominated by men. Gilman has even lived the experience her short story depicts. The “rest cure” that Dr. Weir Mitchell, a famous doctor of the time prescribed, is mentioned in Gilman’s “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall Paper” and reflects men’s disparaging attitudes. His “rest cure” calls for complete rest, forced feeding and complete seclusion from the world (845). The woman in “The Yellow Wall-paper” is treated a bit more humanely but despite the humanity she is still reduced to an almost animal like state. This lack of control over the male influence is most defiantly shown in the last line of “Story of an Hour”. Chopin is still in control of this, but only to a certain degree. When Mrs. Mallard died, Chopin left only the doctor speak for her (“Story of an Hour” 2). Other characters could have concluded the story, but Chopin deliberately left the doctor to do so.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin present three woman affected by male dominated societies. The characters lives were shaped and defined by patriarchy just as Gilman and Chopin’s were. If all that is left for the authors and their characters is what Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clement describe as a “Woman’s voyage as a body” then let us take this body of work and use it as a window into the psyche of women everywhere.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. “At the ‘Cadian Ball”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym. 6th. Ed. Norton & Company.
622-629

---. “Story of an Hour”. Short Stories. 14 March. 2005. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/StorHour.shtml

---. “The Storm”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym. 6th. Ed. Norton & Company.
629-633

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym. 6th. Ed. Norton & Company.
832-844.

---. “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym. 6th. Ed. Norton & Company.
844-845.