“The World of Contradictions: Through the scope of formalist criticism, it is apparent that the setting in James Joyce’s Araby and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper affects the main character’s mental and physical state”

“Araby” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both remarkable short stories, but the thoughts conceived after reading it are everything but short. Araby, written by, James Joyce is about a young character that lives in a neighborhood that appears to be dark and gloomy based solely on the author’s description of the houses and such. “An uninhabited house of two storeys at the blind end…” suggests that this neighborhood isn’t in paramount condition. On the other hand, the author makes several references to religious faith. For example, the Christian Brothers’ School, where the young character attends, or the Priest who has died prior to this story taking place, evokes this idea of purity. It is quite contrary that in a short story where the author paints a vivid image of gloom and despair, there are religious references that cause readers into a world of contradiction. In the same way Charlotte Gilman Perkins, author of The Yellow Wallpaper seeks to evoke a message of individual expression and successfully does so by recording the progression of the illness, through the state of the “yellow” wallpaper. Apparently, the bulk of the setting of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is in a room that the unnamed narrator has been forced to stay in by her husband, John, so that she may recover from what he has said she is suffering from. John denies his wife the right to work and write -- the two things that help here free her mind and express herself. Although the narrator begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation, disturbing elements such as the “rings and things” in the