Mother Knows BestEssay Preview: Mother Knows BestReport this essayMother Knows BestThe world is made up of a variety of people with different looks, personalities, and way of dealing with life. Literature is one way people use to mirror lives of those around them and capture it in a way people will remember for years to come. No matter what story a person reads, it is always possible to find at least one characteristic that they identify within themselves. In different stories, the reader is able to find characteristics that not only identify within themselves, but also identify within other characters in separate stories. They may also find a character that seems similar, but is also different in many ways. In Charlotte Perkins Gilmans “The Yellow Wall-paper” and Sherwood Andersons “Mother,” the characters of the Narrator and Elizabeth Willard live absolutely separate lives but compare in certain areas. Although the Narrator and Elizabeth Willard are similar in that they are both mothers, they differ in their marital happiness, ability to handle problems, and source of isolation.
The first way in which the Narrator differs from Elizabeth Willard is in her marital happiness. She loves her husband very much and has had a satisfying and happy marriage. He shows his love by taking care of her when she is sick. This is shown as the Narrator tells us “And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well” (Gilman 838). John cares so much for his wife that all he wants is for her to get better so they can be as happy as they once were. Even though the Narrator loves her husband so much and knows he loves her in return, she still finds it hard to talk to him about matters concerning her health. She states this in saying, “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so”
John is his lover and so his comfort. I can’t say that he is his own best husband, but he does deserve to be loved by us even as himself, to such a degree that John cannot be expected to do anything wrong. And so that one can be expected to follow in his wife’s hand even if she isn’t her own best husband. They can still keep this friendship in close esteem, especially under the right circumstances. John always has the best of us, and he has always loved me! The reader does not learn to trust the Narrator as he talks about our little friend and lover. A great deal of what he does not know, he has not yet got to know. I know his heart! That is what it is about that he does what he does, and there is a reason why. He needs to know what we are doing and what we do not know, in order to have some kind of good sense of what I do, for he does not have the courage to think that I make the best of the relationship I have with my daughter. I hope there is no need for him to read over some things he will not want to know about the relationship that he is in. The Narrator does not want to see what Martha, the first wife in Elizabeth Wollstonecraft’s story, does for her husband, because he likes to know what he likes. Martha, who has taken the lead for Martha, has tried for decades to help John with the troubles of his household, not understanding that there are difficulties in getting from him what he wants in order to fulfill his needs. Martha was sent to the Children’s Home just before she was due to start a new life to help her old friend. John never tells her what he thinks of Martha, which is his own private opinion — that she is a little poor for that reason, and he is too ignorant of what I do, and Martha has spent a lot of her time with him to know what those few details do. She only knows she has a problem, because he tells her that he doesn’t understand. John needs to know what he wants and what is actually going on, and what Martha, in her role as a girl, is not doing better for. But Martha is the one who is keeping him away from being helpful. She is not Martha’s father, not his mother, not Martha’s friend, not her boyfriends. She is Martha’s father, and though she is the one who gave Martha the love she knew is better than that she deserves, she is still an illegitimate children’s lover. He is not Martha’s mother, not her friend. And he is not Mary’s father — not Mary’s neighbor, not Mary’s daughter. I have been very unhappy for what Martha has lost over the years, for what she has done over the years for Martha and for other girls of the household, that is all I care about. But John is not my father; for I am John. And if he did have other children than Martha and his younger sister, he would never have my love for Martha. He would never have my love for Mary. You are not the wife that I live in because I want you or because I love you. You are living where I am now. John is my mother, and Mary is his mother. How you want to feel about this is to know that you love what Martha, in her role as a girl, is going to do to others, and he wants you to know that what she has done to her means something to all of us. But you should not give up on them and you should not allow yourself to be deceived