JOURNAL 2 - The Yellow Wallpaper vs. The Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge
One of the readings of this week is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story the Yellow Wallpaper. To tell you the truth I did not enjoy it at all. I just read it all along because it is obligatory to read. But of course if I have already read it I was curious about why did the authoress write such a moody, melancholic story.
That is not a surprise to me that Gilman suffered from depression just as her leading character. We can follow closely the woman's mental worrying to some kind of madness. She is obliged to a rest cure which was known the best cure for depressed persons in the end of the 19th century. Both the surroundings and the opinion of her husband contribute such strange end of the story. The description of the wallpaper is so detailed that the reader can imagine it easily. As for myself, this depiction is a little bit boring and somewhat irritating and the wallpaper is nerve-racking too definitely. I don't wonder the woman feels herself ill among those walls. In my opinion there is in the story some kind of oppression of women by men which was not exceptional in those days.
Besides I had a feeling like I was reading a ghost story. I would not have been astonished at all if it had revealed at the end that there were ghosts in the mansion.
The another short story is The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The writer, Ambrose Bierce, sets the story in the time of American Civil War. The Civil War is one of the most famous historical events for American people this is why lots of writer adapted its incidents. An outstanding film is the "Glory" from 1989 about the first black regiment of the Union Army and this film is the winner of three Oscars.
Bierce's short story is really interesting for me not just because I am a history teacher. There is some kind of tension in the whole story. When I read, I know that the protagonist was dead but I hoped he would manage to escape and reunion with his family after all. The starting is remarkable, the writer begins "in medias res" and the reader can be informed later why is the man condemned to death, who is he, his relations to the Civil War etc. I like stories, novels which plot is not linear, when the writer shifts back and forth in time, however it can be a little bit confusing some time.
In my opinion this story might be a true story for Bierce fought in the Civil War. Perhaps he heard this story from one of his fellow-soldier. It is interesting that Bierce fought for the North but he wrote in the way that the South-supporter plantation owner Farquhar is who the reader sympathizes with (not with the unionist soldiers).
The protagonists escape from reality into their imagination in both stories. But the mood they convey is different in my opinion. For me Gilman's story was a more pessimistic, when I was reading the story I had a feeling that there is no hope for the women, she was going to be mad in the end. In the another story there is more hope until the very end.