The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening were two works written during the era of expression. The entire country was going through an era of reconstruction; politically, socially, culturally and economically. The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening are feminist works aimed at the psychological, social and cultural injustices during the era. According to Mizruchi, “Cosmopolitanism aroused unease: depression and détente were prevalent in a society whose pace and variety seemed relentless. Yet the same circumstances also instilled hope. For it was widely recognized that the growing heterogeneity of a newly globalized America would be a source of lasting vitality.” (Mizruchi, 2008) The wives portrayed in these works defeated their husbands' attitudes during this patriarchal culture. Patriarchal times prescribed a “rest cure” for neurasthenia (minor depression). Today neurasthenia would be called postpartum depression. Rest and quiet were prescribed as an antidote eagerly used by the medical establishment in the United States. The medical establishment was dominated by men, like her husband John in The Yellow Wallpaper. The wife in The Yellow Wallpaper defeated her husband John by accepting madness instead of repression, rejecting a life of "unhappy, silent acceptance." John, her husband, forbids her from doing anything other than marital things. He didn't like her writing. The writing symbolized the use of his mind. Artistic skills, including writing, were trivial to him. In a sign of rebellion, inside the yellow-papered "cell", he used his mind to create a dark, gothic world full of his own crazy fantasies and artistic revolts (including thoughts of burning down the house), and to escape into a repressed anger. The repressed anger at the end… middle of paper… the “sea” towards his death of privacy, freedom and comfort. Kate Chopin's story The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story The Yellow Wallpaper draw their power from two truths: first, each work represents a political cry against injustice and the socio/political genesis of the modern feminist movement. Secondly, each text is the custodian of a new literary history. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman seem to begin a new phase in textual history in which literary conventions are revised to serve an ideology representative of the "new" female presence. Two conventions in particular seem of central importance: "marriage" and "property." Works Cited Mizruchi S. Rise of Multicultural America: Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915 [e-book]. University of North Carolina Press; 2008. Available from: eBook Collection, Ipswich, MA. Access in August 30, 2011.