Time and Gender in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

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 Gérard 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. Gérard 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.