Significance of Identity to Human Experience

Tiffani Pan

Professor Haynes

English 209

1 October 2016

Significance of Identity to Human Experience

        The identity of one’s own self is important to an individual because it forms the foundation of a person’s entire life. When a person is free to express their inner self without any inhibitions or reservations and in accordance to the identity they have developed over the years, they live a more fulfilling and peaceful life. When the person is forced to live against their values and identity due to societal expectations or norms, they tend to feel oppressed and live a life full of crisis and doubt. This identity crisis either builds up inside the person in the form of rage towards the oppressors or works towards the internal damage of the sense of being until not much is left in the person. This is the common message that can be seen in the three characters of three different stories: The Narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper, Louise Mallard from The Story of an Hour, and Satrapi from Persepolis: The Veil.

        The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows a character who is a victim of a paradoxical life in which she loses touch with the world outside her as she becomes more and more familiar of the internal reality of her life and self. The narrator’s true identity shows that she has formed over the years as a highly expressive and imaginative woman. There is evidence of her being unhappy with her marriage to her husband John. Instead of accepting it fully and trying to do something about it, either fix her relationship with John or get out of it, she goes on to go into denial and imagine things about her house and life that are not there. As a part of her treatment, her doctor and husband forbids her from doing any activity, including writing. “There comes John, and I must put this away, --- he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 534). There is little no activity in her life and absolutely no freedom at all until she starts keeping a secret journal. She reveals her obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her journal, the pattern of which was not yet clear to her initially, but as the obsession grows, she starts seeing a woman trapped and creeping. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder --- I begin to think --- I wish John would take me away from here!” (538). Her loneliness, lack of activity, and overactive imagination make her go insane. It comes to the point where she starts thinking that she is the trapped woman and she has come out from the wallpaper, not knowing that she is trapped in a marriage she has no hope of escaping from. Here, her unhappy marriage and over controlling husband have taken away her sense of identity and personal freedom, which have made her lose herself completely. This shows how the lack of freedom to express oneself and live according to one’s own terms can lead to suffocation of the person.

        In Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour, Louise Mallard, the main character, cannot be seen as oppressed as the narrator was in The Yellow Wallpaper, but there are hints towards her being unhappy with her marriage as well. She seems to be how a proper lady is expected to be by the society, playing her role right but on the inside, she is unhappy. Her unhappiness can be seen from her heart problems that have risen at her age. The heart problems, however, have not been specified. They could be actual heart problems or they could simply be her being depressed due to her forcing herself into an unhappy relationship. Even if she has real and physical heart problems, chances are that they are due to her forcing herself into an unhappy situation. This is the reason that she cannot help but feel elated when she hears the news of her husband’s death. She is not an evil person, does not wish bad things on her husband, and she is certain that she will genuinely feel the loss of his death when she sees his dead body, but she cannot help but to look forward to what life has to offer her now that she is independent to be her own person, as it is shown when she says, “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin 289). This feeling of elation upon the death of her husband shows how desperate she was to live her life according to her identity instead of how she was forced to live. The feeling of freedom is so good that she actually feels it physically, feeling her heart beat more enthusiastically and feeling warmth course through her whole body. However, that feeling is short-lived when she sees her husband walk through the door, alive and well. After feeling that she earned that feeling she had longed for all her life, she feels her heart sink as it is taken away from her in one swift motion. “...she had died of heart disease --- of joy that kills" (289). This shows that she was so unhappy with her marriage that having to go back to that life made her die of shock and dread. If she was true to herself and her identity, she would have gotten out of this unhappy marriage. She might have been alive and happy with her life instead of having heart problems and ultimately dying because of them.