Abstract
The aim of this presentation is to show how Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin manipulate temporality to foreground their themes in The Yellow Wall-Paper and The Story of an Hour in the light of GeÌrard Genette’s theory of time. Both stories present female characters oppressed by the patriarchal authority in the marriage and their attempts to liberate themselves from this oppression. The aim is to find out how the gender of the author or protagonist in the narration can affect the time of narration. GeÌrard Genette’s theory of time (order) is applied to these short stories in order to confirm that the theme of the story affects the time of narration regarding women’s status in the narration. The results are in agreement with feminist narratologists who believe that the female authors use techniques of time in the narration purposefully to resist or negotiate with patriarchy in the process of women’s liberation.
Highlights
The concept of time, the main concern of human beings in the physical world, is one of the main subjects of literary works
Classical narratology believes in neutrality of time, and it bases its definition on masculine time as the universal definition
When we comparing “TYWP” and “TSOAH,” it shows that both female characters are hoping for a free and promising life, and both are hunted by their past where patriarchy belongs
Summary
The concept of time, the main concern of human beings in the physical world, is one of the main subjects of literary works. Page herself criticizes the idea of universalism and believes that one cannot generalize specific feminine style over women authors and cannot apply this poetics to all female writers Another justification for using cyclic time in opposition to essentialist point of view is that female authors or characters reverse chronological order and use cyclic time as a device to resist patriarchal authority and linear time (Polster, 2010). “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (1894) have the same theme of women’s confinement in the domestic sphere and their attempt to set themselves free from this confinement These similar themes give the opportunity of comparing techniques of temporality in these short stories to see how the authors apply techniques of time to foreground their themes and the impossibility of women’s success in their struggle. The question is how the techniques of temporality can illustrate these subjects and themes in the stories?
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