An analysis of The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” are the stories of two women who suffer from ailments, one mental, the other physical, and who are very emotionally detached from their husbands. The emotional detachment may stem from complacency in the marriage, but I believe their illness is the cause of the disengagement. In the era in which these stories were written, marriages were an economic arrangement that had very little to do with love. In both stories, the couples seem to have an ideal marriage, which eventually turns into estrangement. It may be that the end of a marriage during this time was unheard of. The protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" suffers from a mental illness, which can be read as postpartum depression. In “The Story of an Hour” Louise Mallard suffers from heart problems. The couples share some love for each other but the disconnect was stronger. The protagonist's disconnect is evident because her husband treats her like a little girl instead of a wife when he takes her “…in his arms and calls [his] blessed goose” (p121). Mallard's disconnect is also evident because the "face of her husband who had never looked at her except with love, fixed, gray and dead" (p 15). This is not the emotion a wife wants to feel from her husband. There is evidence of love between the Mallards when Louise “knew she would cry again when she saw the gentle, tender hands clasped in death” (p 15). She often didn't love him, but now she didn't care that he thought he was dead. The protagonist of the other story exclaims “Dear John! He loves me very much…” (p123). She proclaims her husband's love throughout the story, I believe, in an attempt to bind the disconnection she feels with her husband. Emotional detachment can border on emotional abuse. The dominant spouse will use this to isolate their spouse from family and friends. They will decide who will see their spouses, where they will be able to go, and what kind of guests they will be able to receive. This rings true in “The Yellow Wallpaper.