Insanity and the End of Two Lives: A Comparison of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat" and Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper"
...th of her first daughter, she also suffered depression (which we would now diagnose as post partum depression) and “she ended her own life by taking an overdose of chloroform” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gilman.htm, p 2). The point of view of both stories lies with the narrator. The narrators share with the reader a set of extraordinary events from their lives. The Black Cat contains a set of fictional events from the narrator’s life. The Yellow Wall-Paper, is also written from the perspective of the narrator and although mostly fictional, recounts the depression that was a part of Gilman’s personal life after the birth of her daughter. Another similarity between the stories is the insight into the husband-wife relationship that both writers impart. In both cases, the wives are treated with disinterest and often disdain. In Poe’s story, the narrator’s marriage changes little in his life. “Indeed, it is almost as if he has acquired another pet rather than a spouse” (Gargano (NCLC), p 325). Then he begins drinking which leads to him mistreating his spouse through both physical and mental abuse. The narrator in Gilman also shares the same insight into marital relationships. Once the narrator has suffered depression after the birth of her daughter, her doctor / husband takes over her care. He takes her to a house in the country, tells her to rest, puts her in a room with bars and treats her more like a child than a spouse. In his treatment of his wife, though he does not physically abuse her, he does mentally abuse her by not allowing her to fight her way back to sanity in a way that she feels would be best for her. Both narrators suffered from hallucinations. Poe’s narrator upon looking at the only wall left over after his house burned down sees the impression of a cat with a rope around its neck. As well, the cat that replaced Pluto has a white patch of fur on his chest in which the he sees the shape of a gallows. Gilman’s narrator sees “a recurrent spot in the pattern that looks like a broken neck with two bulbous eyes staring at you” (Stanford, P 609). She also sees women behind the bars in the yellow wallpaper. It would seem that both narrators were suffering from psychotic depression. According to psychiatric professionals “Psychotic depression is characterized by not only depressive symptoms, but also by hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren't really there) or delusions (irrational thoughts and fears)” (http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/depression /psychotic.asp). It would be difficult to share with such precision the characteristics of psychotic depression through their writing without having firsthand experience with the disease. In both stories, the antagonists are also very interesting. Gilman uses the women trapped behind the wallpaper as the antagonists of the story, whereas in Poe, the black cat serves as the antagonist. Both narrators are assigning traits to the antagonists that are impossible to reconcile. It is impossible for either wallpaper or a cat to be antagonistic. Rather than the cat or the wallpaper being the true antagonists, they are symbols of each narrators fight within themselves. This symbolism is common to both stories. ...