In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, female characters are confined mentally and physically. In 1890, when these stories were written, women had no role in society. The woman's role in the home included cleaning and maintaining the house, taking care of the children and preparing meals three times a day. The man's role was to go out and work to earn money for his family. He also took care of his wife. He acted as his wife's leader, ruler, and doctor. Gilman and Chopin demonstrate how women are physically confined, how they are mentally confined, and how being limited in these ways affects women's emotions, actions, and mental stability. In "The Story of an Hour", Louise Mallard learns from Josephine and Richards that her husband, Brently, has died. It is limited to the room upstairs. While Josephine and Richards believe she is upstairs grieving, Louise is actually quite happy to finally be free from being restrained by her husband. Louise looks out the window at a big, beautiful world. Now he has a completely new view of the world. Her husband's accidental death allows her to start thinking about making decisions for herself and seeing things without his opinion. Just as in Louise's case, the husband constantly keeps the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" in one room. She is locked in a big yellow room because her husband says she is sick. The narrator physically needs human interaction. The fact that he kept her in this room is making her sicker than she already is. Both of these women live with a completely dejected spirit. As illustrated in these two stories, Dorothy Hartman stands... in the center of the paper... suddenly loses consciousness. The narrator exclaims, "[She must] creep up on him every time!" This very line shows how irrational the woman is due to her mental and physical quarantine in the vast yellow room. In the late 1800s and 1900s women were not superior. Their spouses not only constantly governed them, but took complete care of their husbands. They couldn't make decisions; men have to tell women how, when, why and where to do something. If a husband says a woman must do something, she must listen. Like Louise of "The Story of an Hour" and the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper," they too are cared for by their husbands and are inferior to their husbands or any other man. The only jobs they have are inside the house. Confinement in their homes leads them to enjoy excessively when they are freed from their husband's power.