The Will of a Woman

Scott Hunt

ENGL 232

04/17/2011

The Will of a Woman

Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Women everyday were told what, when, how, where, and why. It wasn’t until the 1920’s when women finally won a major battle for themselves. They were then given the right to vote. They now had a voice. Women could finally speak their mind about the most important topics and issues going on throughout the world. No more did a woman have to worry about being ridiculed or pushed aside with what she thought or how she felt. We can see how these hardships play out in Ron Rash’s “The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Now these stories are much more different than they are similar. They are set in different time periods many years apart and they’re both sharing different ideas, but they can be used to signify the struggles a woman goes through no matter the time period.

Now obviously Charlotte Gilman had much more to do with women’s rights than Ron Rash did but his story, “The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars”, is still a good example of the everyday struggle for women. In the beginning we find out the main character, Ruth Lealand, has gotten divorced from her husband, Richard, has lost her newborn child, and just recently lost her mother. It’s safe to say she’s in a state of depression, which is more common in women than men. She feels cut off from the world. There is nothing to keep her connected to anyone she knows. She doesn’t try to move on with her life; “In the end only Richard moved on” (94). We see this same kind of depression with the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Both women need someone or something they can either relate to or help make them feel whole again. That’s where the jaguar comes in for Ruth. At the culmination of everything bad in her life, “Ruth Lealand thinks of jaguars” (91). In that moment she thinks of nothing else, her mind goes free and she...