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om As a literary woman of the nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson wrote, “ ‘Hope’ is a things with feathers- that perches in the soul- and sings a tune without the words- and never stops- at all.” Are you listening? Does your soul too sing a melody, an ongoing tune to which you delicately move, and never stop? Here Dickinson suggests an aspect of life, a struggle for spiritual freedom, that applies to many women within the nineteenth century, as well as the women of today. My consciousness speaks to me; a spark of hope rests inside my soul, hoping to emerge into the sunlight of each new day. I am a woman; I am a delicate woman who listens to Dickinson’s fine words. I listen to the tune that never ends, in a constant search for achieving my own “space.” Everyday, I struggle to free my feathered bird from its cage. Dickinson has identified with her internal struggle as a woman, to achieve an outer space, and as the bird, she freed herself from the cage that held her spiritual soul. A caged bird symbolizes Dickinson’s soul. Similarly, fictional women in nineteenth century literature are caged birds. Consider for example, Kate Chopin’s, Edna Pontellier in The Awakening and Charolette Perkins Gilman’s, Woman, in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Initially in Kate Chopin’s, The Awakening we meet a fair, frail, passionate woman, Edna Pontellier, whose destiny is to fall into spiritual depression. She is a caged bird that cannot be released from her own spiritual confinement until she recognizes her own strength to do so. Edna’s childish, capricious tendencies, concerning her submissiveness towards her “lovers” and adultery towards her husband create confusion in finding the outlet for her freedom and passion. As time progresses, Edna searches for a way to mask her spiritual turmoil and confusion by falsely labeling “art” as her passion. She notices Mademoiselle Reisz’s passion for music, and subconsciously desires art to serve as a mechanism for spiritual contentment, but as readers we are not convinced that her passion for art is strong enough to open the door of her cage to the surrounding world of freedom and happiness. The bird, Edna Pontellier, aspires in some way to be released from such a familiar, monotonous, depressing realm of discomfort, the cage; the room in which she is trapped. Her ongoing journey is to find the key that opens the door of her restraining world. On a late moonlit night, early in the book, Edna lingers on the outskirts of her room despondently; her husband attempts to lure her back into the house with authority. “ She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that and if she had submitted to his command” (Chopin 78). Edna feels controlled and helpless by the walls and people which surround her; she needs to be relieved of the familiarity of the situation to be spiritually satisfied. “The pigeon-house (which she lives in) pleased her” (151), and literally begins to threaten her source of potential happiness. The room fits like a glove; she molds to the spaces inside the glove. The glove restricts her from being free to the outside world. She needs to throw away the glove that she is familiar with and disgusted by. Upon her husband’s request to return to the room, “Edna begins to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream… to feel again the realities pressing into her soul” (78). She is unconsciously perturbed by the environment which left her spirit “helpless to the conditions that crowded her in” (78). In some way, Edna Pontellier needs to release herself from an introverted world that holds her so tightly from freedom. After hours of pondering her despair that night, Edna realizes her position in society as a woman, as an individual. She subconsciously recognizes that she needs to create her own “space” and open her cage. She continues to endure the trapped situation that she lives in for the time being. Her instability becomes apparent to the people who surround her, most notably her husband. “It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier’s mind to wonder if his wife where not growing a little bit unbalanced mentally…she was not herself…” (108). She needs to free herself from the environment that is becoming too familiar to her. Her attitude inside the cage suggests that she was a “regal woman, the one who rules (her cage), who looks on, who stands alone” (145). As her familiarity with the cage begins to grow stronger throughout the ongoing days and months, Edna searches for other aspects of life to potentially compensate for her seemingly eternal unhappiness; hoping to find the key to unleashing her soul. As Edna continues to search for happiness through relationships with “lovers”, her family, and her falsely labeled passion, she begins to realize that she has no place in the world; her cage is smothering her. She cannot seem to fulfil the obligation that she feels society has placed upon her, as a mother, as a lover, as well as an artist. If she runs away with another lover, the next man will become hurt, torn and therefore her own satisfaction and need for stability will not be met. She tries to find her independence through other people, and needs to find the key to her independence by her own free will. All sense of her aspired reality has gone out of her life; “she abandoned herself to Fate and awaited to consequences with indifference “ (162). Chopin is describing Edna’s subconscious need to be released from the cage that envelops her. The bird perches within her soul and sings a song asking to be released; it will not stop singing, it needs to free itself. She is indifferent about the manner of her release; her release is imperative. Edna Pontellier never finds the key that will properly open her cage- in the sense that she discovers the wrong door- a door that leads her to a bizarre freedom. A release that gives her space to be free spiritually, but a release that will never allow her to be “wholly” happy and content with herself in society as an individual. She then discovers herself. As a bird releases itself from a cage for the first time to view a new world, Edna emerges from the familiar surroundings and ventures out for a virgin spiritual flight. “How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! How delicious! She felt like some newborn creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world it had never known” (175). Elegantly, Edna proceeds into the vast dark ocean intending to drown herself to a new world; a free world. Charolette Perkins Gilman’s character, the Woman, is in many ways similar to Edna Pontellier. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a Poe-like work that descends into the mind of a female victim who struggles for her freedom and space within an “illness”. The woman is a bird trapped within a cage. She suffers from an illness that holds her from a spiritually stable life. In this narrative, one is placed into the mind of a woman who is experiencing a psychological problem. She describes her condition and situation through writing to an audience in her journal. For the summer, she and her husband John, move into a colonial mansion and immediately one notices her suspicion of her surroundings. “I still proudly declare there is something queer about it” (Gilman 154). Initially, she notices that she has a discomfort in the standing situation, but she seems willing to endure the queerness due to her curiosity. Her husband requested their stay at this summer home. John, who is a physician, seems to have control over his patient, his wife. She suggests that the presence of her husband may be one cause of her ongoing condition, she describes, “ perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (154). But more importantly, the solitude and position of the house, suggest her true confinement. “ I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society stimulus- but john says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (155-56). The woman’s feelings, due to the condition and environment, will ultimately serve as the cage that traps her in. It becomes apparent to the reader that her impending confinement in the room will serve her cage. This condition will spark the negative mannerisms that follow. She describes the house; “It is quite alone … there are hedges and walls and gates that lock” (155). Although she speaks with a sense of excitement, we notice that her descriptions create a restricted environment that will confine her from the surrounding world. Her cage is limiting her potential “space”. The couple continues to make this setting their home, despite her skepticism. “… There is something strange about the house- I can feel it… I don’t like our room a bit… I should judge; for the window’s are barred…” (155-56). One is now aware that she has subconsciously identified the room as her cage, and her condition only irritates her inability to be released from the cage. Despite the fact that she is aware she is to be confined to the room while her condition subsides, while listening to the commands of her husband (as a physician), she is intrigued by one aspect of the room- the yellow wallpaper. “ It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounces enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide…” (156). The room is her cage, but noticing the immensity in the wallpaper is a potential outlet for her freedom. Although she continues to complain and become more irritated by her environment, “ I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long,” (156), she becomes more enthralled by the paper as she continues to examine it’s intricacies. Her surroundings penetrate her mind and condition, pervading her last sane sense; “ This paper looks to me as if it knew what vicious influence it had” (158). The wallpaper was a potential outlet for freedom, but it toys with her mind to the point that the lock upon the cage door tightens. She delves too far into analyzing the meaning of the paper; becoming too familiar with the aspect of the cage that continues to corrupt her mind, and feed her physiological condition. She is unaware that she needs rest from her frantic situation in order to be peacefully freed, but she continues to fiddle with the paper. As time progresses the woman spends much time in confinement, and the results are severely beginning to alter her state of mind; the cage in which she lives begins to feel too familiar for a healthy change, it will destroy her potential spiritual happiness. “I’m getting fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper,” (159). Like Edna, she describes that the familiarity of the cage is beginning to fit her like a glove. She does not notice the damage that this restriction has on her; it comes to the point where she needs direction in order to save herself from going insane, although she is the only person who has her key to happiness. Her frustration suggests that she needs help, “ I am getting angry enough to do something drastic” (168). Noticing the severity of the situation, John coaches her in the right direction. “ He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control …” (161). John is literally handing her the key to her cage, but she does not see the offer and is unconsciously nonchalant about the key. She will not take the key; the bird that perches in her soul continues to sing a tune without specific words or direction; they are words she cannot understand. But, the bird continues to sing, ‘let me out.’ Time and time again she describes the paper and at last she notices a woman who was “showed behind a dim sub- pattern” that nobody notices but herself (163). She identifies that woman as herself, a bird, who is caged in the bars of shadowed moonlight. The yellow wallpaper, the room, and the pinnacle of her obsession, amount to a burden that swelters inside her soul, and haunts her curiosity. “ I think there are a great many women behind (the bars), and sometimes only one” (165). She suggests that she wants to be free, like the other women, and asks herself if other women experience the same journey, but doubts herself because “sometimes there is only one” behind bars, herself. But with all of the vigor left inside of her, she declares that she will no longer withstand the restriction of the cage, “ That awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it today!” (167). At this instant she throws the point of her frustration before herself, and demands of herself the key to the free world. The woman wants to emerge from the cage and let the feathery bird sing a beautiful untouched, and understood melody. She aspires to let the bird fly, by killing the restraint of her freedom. “ I’ve got a rope…It that woman does get out, and tried to get away, I can tie her! (167). She will catch her own sanity with the rope as the door of the cage is thrust open before her. In a fury of emotion, the thoughts of her impending action create a whirlwind of ideas in her mind. She becomes frightened to view such a different world, a world where women like herself may have experienced something similar to her emotional journey, “ I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper (that room) as I did? “ (167). Do they all struggle as she has, to open the door and fly away freely? “ I don’t want to go outside, “ she declares she is frightened by the world she has been sheltered from, “ For outside you have to creep around on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow … I cannot lose my way” (167). The woman is well aware of her inside world, her cage, and this new impending change frightens her. Despite her anxiety of the situation, the woman will soon be a magnificent bird flying in a newfound freedom. In a fury of emotion and desperation she turns the key to the cage door for a virgin flight, “ I’ve got out at last ,” (167) she declares. And she is free to fly, to creep, and to experience the world around her. The epitome of her frustration has been freed; the bird is flying freely. As I pay attention to the fine, poetic words of Emily Dickinson, I ask myself a question. “Who does create the cage that traps my soul within me? Who keeps the bird from singing a melody which I understand?” I ask the same question for the fictional women I have studied. “Is it within one’s strength to determine who has the key to the cage?” As I continue to struggle for the answers to my questions, I continue to listen to the bird that is perched within my soul, singing the ongoing tune- that never stops at all. I too, one day, hope to free myself from the cage that holds me back from life, a free spiritual life. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, Susan Gilbert, Ed. The Awakening and Selected Stories. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. Dickinson, Emily. “Hope.” The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1960. Gilman, Charolette Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Wallace Stegner and Mary Stegner, Ed. Great American Short Stories. New Y so soft, so fair, the color of my baby’s skin pale, milky white innocence – and fluffy like the clouds an ocean of light, around her puffed rosy cheeks she lay upon the bundle of lavender ruffles her pursed, purple lips burbling as she slept violet knitted booties enveloped her tiny digits outfitted in a plum suit, noosed with a delicately embroidered bib and she arose to the brightness of the yellow sunshine the light opened her lids as spring opens a marigold’s petals giggling at the brightness that pervaded her quaint room her tiny fingers galloped through the maize beams that shone upon her body standing reaching, attempting to grasp the transparent ray of radiance ing- and the little bundle fell black darkness- a tunnel- screaming darkness, black, down down down, dark. Black lippitty lartz, and out I fell from my dimmersmat wuffle puffs and clookie clucks i wish everything were as easy as that oh sometimes I really wish that I were you! come on and gimme a real big hug… is there anything ever wrong with you? wobble and dobble and little liffy tiff azarc and wolif times itsy smee now come on really, can you tell what’s wrong with me? Bibliography:

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