Female Depression in Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses that female protagonists Minnie Wright in Susan Glaspell's "Trifles", Emily Grierson in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" are all dominated by male figures, all suffer from depression and all eventually commit violence. The author points out that none of these women have active control of their lives; however, each in their own way makes a desperate attempt to take action to seek a type of redemption for the misery and humiliation they have endured by the male figures in their lives. The paper relates that Gilman actually gives a first hand account of her experience with depression, explaining that she had suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown and sought help from a noted specialist in nervous diseases.

From the Paper:

"Renee Curry writes of "A Rose for Emily," that Faulkner "reveals the limits of gendered narrative through the narrator's inability to understand or know Emily." The men in town are portrayed as respectful of Emily, while the women are curious, and the narrator is both. Through the narrator, Faulkner reveals clues to Emily's life and her father's domination. Apparently, no young man was good enough for Emily, and the town had "long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door." "

More papers on Female Depression in Literature:

• Analytical Essay # 46637 : "Female Hysteria in Literature"
• Research Proposal # 149111 : "Female Psychological Vulnerability in American Literature"
• Essay # 69649 : "Female Teenage Depression: Rural vs. Urban Schools"

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