Barashka

ENG 1120

Comparative Analysis of the Women - Characters in the Stories "Lullaby" by Leslie Marmon Silko and "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Leslie Marmon Silko and Charlotte Perkins Gilman do not have the same national and cultural background, they lived in different periods of the American history and raised different problems in their works, but still they have something in common. They are both women and they cannot avoid writing about women and their fate.

In the short stories "Lullaby" by Leslie Silko and "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Gilman the main characters are women. These two women belong to different social groups and nationalities. At first sight an awfully poor Navajo woman Ayah who is living in a small boxcar shack on a ranch (in "Lullaby") and a comparatively well-to-do white woman living in a colonial mansion (in "The Yellow Wall-Paper") have nothing in common. But on the other hand they are both suffering. The cause of their suffering is different; the intensity is almost the same.

Ayah`s suffering is connected with the death of her elder son Jimmie and the loss of her two children Danny and Ella who were taken from her against her will. She hated her husband because he had taught her to sign her name. Being frightened by the way the white people looked at her children, "like the lizard watches the fly" (Silko 2545), Ayah signed the papers she could not understand at all.

The story begins with Ayah in the later years of her life. She is an old woman now and all her life has become memories. She is waiting for her husband sitting by a creek and starts to reflect on her past and her kids. The story is full of flashbacks describing the times when her children were living with her and even the time when she herself was a little girl and her mother worked at the loom. All the reminiscences are connected with each other and give us a full picture of Ayah and her life. She starts to reflect on her childhood because of having Jimmie's blanket upon her, the one he send to her when he was alive. She tries not to think about Jimmie, her first son, whom she loved with all her heart, and concentrates on something not so painful for her. But still she cannot avoid thinking about him and her other kids. The same blanket evokes all her further reminiscences such as her children's visits to her place with the blond woman in a government car; we see this blanket at the very end of the story when Ayah tucks it around her husband Chato to save him from freezing and it makes her think about her children again.

There is a tragedy before us, a tragedy of a woman and a mother. What can be worse than losing

your kids and having them turned into strangers not recognizing their own mother? What can be worse than living with a man who cannot protect you and your kids and even does not want to. The two things he thinks about are getting drunk and being close to white people, working for them. Even when the rancher fired Chato because the latter was too old to work for him any more and kicked Chato and his wife out of their shack because he had hired new people Chato did not change. He did not understand that white people had been using him all his life and now were throwing him out as something they did not need any more. He went on thinking of being important for them. When Ayah found him drunk wandering on the road to the white man's ranch and asked him why he was going there he answered: "You know they can't run that ranch without me"(Silko 2549). It is only Ayah who understands what kind of attitude white people have to Native Americans. Silko shows it by writing the following lines: "That had satisfied her. To see how the white man repaid Cato's years of loyalty and work. All of Cato's fine-sounding English talk didn't change things." (Silko 2547)

Ayah and her family along with other Native Americans had grown to fear white people that have taken their land. All her life Ayah was afraid of them but now when we see her in the bar everything changes. "She felt calm. In past years they would have told her to get out. But her hair was white now and her face was wrinkled. They looked at her like she was a spider crawling slowly across the room. They were afraid; she could feel the fear. She looked at their faces steadily..." (Silko 2547). It is the climax, the culminating point in the story. White people had taken from her everything they could, they've stolen her kids, ruined her life but still they could not break her, as "there was nothing anyone could do to her now". "She felt satisfied that the man in the bar feared her." (Silko 2548)

It's noticeable that every event concerning Ayah, her husband and kids is described in detail. The author gives a detailed description of the green blanket with its faded wool and unravelling edges, black overshoes of Ayah. As for the white people in the story we can't find any more or less full description of them, they are all sketchy: "khaki uniforms"(Silko 2545) of the white doctors, "dainty gold watch" (Silko 2546) on the wrist of the blond woman. These people are even nameless. This stylistic device serves to show Silko's attitude to the heroine of the story, her sympathy with her.

In the story we come across a lot of descriptions of nature and there is a certain connection between them and the narration itself. In the very beginning of the story we see snow coming "in thick tufts like new wool - washed before the weaver spins it" (Silko 2543) We can trace the following chain: snow is compared with wool - green wool of Jimmies blanket - "freshly washed wool" (Silko 2544) from Ayah's childhood - the soft blankets her mother used to make. All these images are interrelated and used by the author to connect the present with the past of Ayah's life. Besides, they intensify Ayah's tragedy. All the softness of snow and woollen blankets is a certain symbol of motherhood and care, the care she could not give to her kids after the white people had taken them. There is a certain symbolic parallel between Ayah's kids and "new-born goats in early March" (Silko 2547) in the story in the episode when Ayah comes to the bar to look for her husband - the theme of motherhood again.

There is one more motive symbolizing motherhood in the story - it is the motive of a song, a lullaby. It is a "high-pitched Yeibechei song" (Silko 2544) of the wind and the lullaby that Ayah sings