THE OPRESSION OF WOMEN IN CLASSIC LITERATURE
... chemical cure “for the sake of giving himself peace”(p.362). When Aylmer first mentions his feelings about the birthmark to Georgiana, she is angered and hurt, certainly she does not agree with him. She is, however, unable to confront Aylmer or change his mind on the subject and therefore allows him to slowly but surely influence her own way of thinking. She realizes that she is being manipulated but also realizes that as a woman she does not have any other option than to submit to her husband’s will. Aylmer dazzles her with his medical knowledge and assurances that he could successfully remove the birthmark, and despite her discovery of Aylmer’s many experiments that had failed his idealistic expectations, she is forced to place her trust in him because she has no other choice. In the end, Georgiana realizes that taking Aylmer’s potion may very well mean her own death, however she is resigned to comply with his desire to perfect her and drinks the liquid. The birthmark disappears to the delight of Aylmer, yet Georgiana becomes pale, slips from consciousness, and dies, the victim of her husband’s societal ability to control and oppress his wife. Another piece of literature that exemplifies historical western societies’ oppression of women is “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is a powerful piece of writing that is narrated by an unnamed woman who slowly descends into madness as a result of her being trapped in a bland room at the top of an old summer home by her husband, John. A physician, John believes his wife is suffering from a neurological disorder caused by having a baby, which today is known as Postpartum depression. As a result, he rents an old, unused home in the countryside for three months time in the summer and takes her there where she can “rest”. She is confined to a bedroom at the top of the house with few furnishings, bars on the windows, and a yellow colored wallpaper that she takes an immediate disliking to. She repeatedly tells her husband that she does not feel comfortable in the room and wishes she could roam freely, however she is told again and again that she must rest in order to become healthy again. As the story progresses, the narrator becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper, trying to describe the peculiar shapes that "suddenly commit suicide -- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (p.231). As the story continues, it becomes clear that the protagonist’s mental state is questionable as she watches the wallpaper all day, seemingly as her only form of entertainment. She begins to hallucinate a “creeping” woman that she believes is trapped behind the ever more complex patterns that her mind is generating on the wallpaper, and the reader is left to infer that the woman is simply going crazy. Eventually she projects herself as actually being the woman in the wallpaper, and in her delusional state is convinced that she must free that woman. She tears down the wallpaper and at this point it is evident that she has gone completely insane, another victim of the male dominated world which forced her into a minute existence, depriving her of any stimulus whatsoever against her will. Gilman’s story is a horrifying look into the mind of a woman trapped, who deteriorates slowly in the environment that was supposed to help her. It is heavy with symbolism, most notably in the wallpaper itself, its evil patterns representing the crushing power that men held over women at the time and the woman in the paper symbolizing all women who were oppressed. A third example of the oppression of women is found in Martin Scorsese’s movie adaption of the Edith Wharton novel “The Age of Innocence”. Taking place in the 1870's in New York City, it is the story of a man and his love for a disgraced woman whom society frowns upon (yet tolerates because of her family). Newland Archer is a lawyer from a respected family who is expected to marry one May Welland, however the only problem is that Newland is in love with May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Oleska. Originally from Poland, Oleska is married but separated from her husband and is living in New York, however the fami...