Typical Life of American Wife of the late 1800s: An Analysis of Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

The life of the typical American women in the late 1800s was strictly confined to the four walls of a house. For a wife, marriage, husband and family were the destiny. She had no legal political right or voice in public sphere. They were not supposed to involve in any intellectual pursuits but only in domestic chores like cooking, sewing, cleaning etc. The condition of women in any class (upper, lower or middle) was more or less same. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin were noted American writers of nineteenth century. Both writers outrageously expressed their strong views on women, marriage and sex. They were revolutionaries of their time. This paper is going to analyse how Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” depict typical public expectations about marriage and women of late 1800s. It also distinguishes the representation of women and wife in the nineteenth century patriarchal American society