In Amy Tan’s “Rules of the Game” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” both characters inhabit worlds created within their minds. This leads to the isolation between them and the rest of the world. There are marked differences and similarities between the natures of their mentally imposed isolation.
Both Gilman’s narrator and Waverly are responding to the setting in which they are forced to live. Westerly must endure her parent’s difficult marriage, and Gilman’s narrator must deal with being a woman without the autonomy in a male dominated domestic life.
Gilman’s narrator is suffering from an acute psychological situation. She tells her story from the perspective of those around her. She does not understand the nature of her condition, so is forced to repeat the inadequate diagnosis of her doctor.. The doctor is more concerned about the family saving face than getting to the bottom of what is going on with Gilman’s narrator. When the narrator says, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman,1). The Yellow Wallpaper is presented from a first-person narrator. In a normal situation, one would be able to discuss this with one’s doctor or husband. But because of the narrator’s isolation, this is not an option she intensifies as something that she can do.
Tan likewise casts her protagonist, Waverly, as a first-person narrator of the story “Rules of The Game.” Part of Waverly’s isolation might seem that it could run its course in time. She is younger than Perkin’s narrator and also is adapting to a new culture. The scene in the story where she wants to play chess but does not know the rules of the game illustrates this. Waverly also suffers from isolation from her situation, but it is implicit that as she learns the rules of the game, she will be able to participate then in it.
While both narrators have their dilemma brought about by the social situation that they found themselves in, Gilman’s narrator has a disconnect with reality. Her issues are causing an acute and ongoing depression. Waverly suffers from a situational depression. When she retreats to her room, there is more hope that she will emerge from it better able to cope with her estrangement from her reality. If she continues along the path to self-identity, she will be less reliant on how her parent’s perceive her. Tan’s story is a coming of age story. Gilman’s story is the story of someone who has already come of age and found disillusion at her adult destination. The symptoms of both of their conditions are isolation from other people in the immediacy of their life. Their underlying reasons are both contextual, but those contexts are not
Work Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: an autobiography. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Print.
