Though "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" both show the main characters to be of questionable sanity, they portray insanity differently for women and men. Insanity in women is far more subtle than in men; this is due to how women and men are seen differently. Edgar Allan Poe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman have two very different styles of writing and therefore approach the topic of insanity differently. This is because they lived in different periods, and because the roles of women and men are very different. So, why is insanity portrayed to be different among men and women? Why are men portrayed as cunning and eccentric and women are are portrayed as delicate, fragile beings ruled by their hormones and are labeled as overly emotional and sensitive?
In Cask of Amontillado the main Character is driven by an insane need to exact revenge on Fortunato. Montresor perceives that Fortunato has insulted him in some grievous way. This is evident in the opening of the story where Montresor introduces the character of Fortunato and refers to the many slights he has already endured from him. He further states that although up until the present he has suffered Fortunato as best he could that Fortunato had finally gone too far by insulting him. Though it does not state what this insult might be. If one were to speculate on why Poe did not divulge this information, one might conclude that Poe was intent on Montresor being an unreliable narrator and did not want to show the full extent of his insanity.
Montresor's madness becomes increasingly apparent as he plans and carries out his revenge. Evidence of this madness can be seen when as he meets up with Fortunato and speaks of how glad he is to see him, so glad he was that he wrung his hands as if he was giddy at the thought of Fortunato's impending demise. Further evidence is shown when he starts to take Fortunato to the vaults; however mad he is though, he is extremely clever and very convincing. He applies just the right words to elicit exactly what he wants from Fortunato, ensuring that Fortunato will not think anything odd until he has him where he wants him.
Some would look upon the Montresor as nothing more than a zealous man who holds his honor and his family motto tight to his breast that he is cunning and cleaver and slightly over eccentric but by no means insane. Men are seen differently by society, treated differently, insanity is a weakness they can ill afford and if they are a little off their rocker it just makes them stronger. When a man is insane they are considered to be unpredictable, clever, one never know what they are going to do next. They are seen as risk takers, and it is said. ‘Oh he has it under control. That is just how he is wired, but man look at the results he gets.'
Even the way Poe writes about his character shows more of the cunning and cleverness of him, and one has to pay attention to see that Montresor is not all there as it were. Much emphasis is put on the fact that he had his plan all laid out. For example he knew that the staff would not be home if he were to make it clear that they had to stay even though he was gone. Furthermore, when Montresor has Fortunato down in the catacombs but keeps insisting that they turn back for Fortunato's health, once again ensuring that Fortunato would press on, not wanting to appear weak.
The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a woman with a supposed ‘nervous' condition as she slowly descends into a state of madness. The woman of the story has been whisked away by her husband a doctor, to some vacation home for rest and relaxation after having a baby. Because she is a woman, she is seen as delicate, and in need of a man to set boundaries for her. Due to the restrictions put upon her by her ‘doting' husband she is not allowed to do anything that would possibly ‘tax' her delicate sensibilities and starts to develop an unhealthy fascination with the wallpaper of her room
As she becomes more obsessed with the wallpaper, we see her revulsion of it turn into a manic representation of her confusing and dizzying drop into insanity. In the story the character is a writer with an active imagination, and as she says. "I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of." (Gilman, 1892, p. 733) This is the likely reason why she became focused on the wallpaper in the beginning.
When she first arrives at the house and gets into the room all she can talk about is how hideous this wallpaper is and how off putting the pattern of it is. As her husband exults his need to make her into a recluse and keep her resting away from any stimuli she starts to look upon the wallpaper with increasing enthusiasm and begins to see things in it that are not there as is evidence here in this excerpt: "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day." (Gilman, 1892, p. 734)
Eventually near the end of the story her insanity is becoming quite apparent and others around her are starting to notice. She spends all her time studying the paper trying to figure it out, loosing all interest in anything else. This is where we can see how the dominance of her husband exacerbates her obsession with the paper, and her dissent into madness. The husband continues to treat her as a frail child and the isolation that she suffers pushes her further into her delusions.
Finally although the shift is very subtle, the moment of her insanity is fully revealed in just one line. "--there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?" (Gilman, 1892, p. 740) At the end it is no longer some woman whom she must let out and trap but it is herself that is trapped. Yet even though she has been working to free this woman from the paper, herself, she still feels so trapped that she must trap the woman with the rope which in turn becomes she.
Clearly both stories depict two characters at stages of madness. In a publication of Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2001) it is said about differences in gender related mental disorder:
"There are significant gender differences in the prevalence of specific psychiatric disorders, with some disorders more common in women, and others more common in men. The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) survey of 10 000 adults living in private households in the UK found that women were more likely than men to suffer from a neurotic health problem, and men were three times more likely than women to suffer from alcohol dependence and twice as likely to suffer from drug dependence (Meltzer et al, 1995). This gender difference is most marked for eating disorders: over 90% of patients with anorexia nervosa are female."
Out of the two stories I believe I find The Yellow Wallpaper to be the more disturbing of the two. It is something quite chilling to see how another person can contribute to the onset of madness in an otherwise normal person. This story kind of reminds me of The Shining and how the father slowly succumbs to madness due to cabin fever. Still I could make comparisons or should I say contradictions on how men's insanity and women's insanity differ between these two stories as well but that is for another paper.
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