Isolation in the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Rose for Emily by William Faulkner 

    Isolation in the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

            Human beings got conditioned to seek out companionship or to form relationships. Solitary conditions are often extraordinary since people thrive better once they share contact. Social isolation ranges from voluntary isolation to involuntary separation. Voluntary isolation happens when an individual decides to cut themselves off the influence of society and lead their individual lives with minimal external social impact. Automatic isolation, on the other hand, is imposed on an individual by others. The stories, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Rose for Emily by William Faulkner both bring out the theme of isolation through the lives of the main characters. Faulkner brings out voluntary isolation through the life of Emily, while Gilman brings out involuntary and its consequences through the life of the narrator. Isolation in both stories got influenced by different experiences, allows individuals to indulge in their fancies, and has negative reparations on the wellbeing of an individual.

Firstly, difficult circumstances influence isolation. Human beings are inherently social. For these women to choose or get forced into isolation, they had to have gone through life-changing experiences. Emily got raised in an extremely wealthy family. Her father isolated her from society due to their superior social status. When suitors came to ask for Emily’s hand in marriage, they were all sent away. Her father did not think any man suitable for her daughter. Once the father died, Emily went on with her lifestyle of isolation. She indulged in a relationship with a suiter, Homer Barron. Homer, last seen going into Emily’s home. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper, on the other hand, fell into a nervous depression after delivering her child. Her husband is a physician who is aware of the consequences of his wife’s hysteria. He takes measures suitable to keep her safe. Her involuntary isolation was a way to help her get better.

Isolation in both stories allows the main characters to indulge in their fancies. In A Rose for Emily, Emily gets to maintain a traditional lifestyle. The society was slowly thriving into modernity. However, Emily maintains her old-fashioned ways since they work for her. The narrator describes her house as the last vestige of the grandeur of a lost era. She also stuck to old laws placed on her family. She refused to pay taxes since the mayor, in her father’s time, exempted the family from contributing to the society in charge. Isolation, in this case, allowed her to live in the comfort of the boundaries within which she got raised. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator gets a chance to journal. She loved to write. Even though she got exempted from indulging in her imagination, she used the journal as a means to express and escape the boredom. Through her memoir, the reader views her setting from her perspective, understand her feelings towards isolation, sees her husband’s family through her eyes. Conclusively, separation allows people to engage in activities that intrigue them to a certain degree.

Isolation hurts the mental health of an individual. In Rose for Emily, Emily’s necrophilia gets exposed once she dies. When Emily dies at the age of 74, the people from her township get a chance to see her house finally. Over a decade, the society got isolated from the house. When they search through the house, they find the skeleton and rotting flesh of Homer. They also find strands of gray hair that belong to Emily. Emily’s isolation caused a strange obsession for Homer such that once he died, she could not get herself to bury the body. Instead, she opted to keep it and regularly sleep beside the corps. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator develops a strange obsession for her yellow wallpaper. She pays close attention to the patterns that she slowly begins to see images. She later starts to claim that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper. She considers the woman moving, trying to escape through the metal bars in the window. Slowly, she believes that she is the woman in the wallpaper and seeks out ways to set the woman free. She thought that in setting the woman free, she would also find her freedom. She eventually frantically decides to tear the wallpaper apart. Her husband finds her and faints to the horrific sight of his wife’s state.

In conclusion, isolation has different causes. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator got forced into isolation due to her nervous depression. Thus, she manages to keep track of her days through journaling. Over time, the journaling shows her obsession with the wallpaper and her need to free a trapped woman. Rose for Emily isolates herself due to the nature of her upbringing. Her isolation allows her to live her life without having to conform to societal changes. However, it also forces her to develop necrophilia. Separation is unique to human beings since there is a constant need to socialize and belong to a community.