How do the authors' use of symbolism in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and in "A Rose for Emily" compare and contrast?I have read both stories and need to...

Perhaps in deciding how symbols are used by William
Faulkner in "A Rose for Emily" and by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in "The Yellow
Wallpaper," you may wish to trace the development of character in each story as there is
a commonality to Emily and Gilman's narrator.  For, both are victims of female
repression and confinement who seek escape while they also seek to control long
forbidden desire and fears.  And, both women's final act is an expression of long,
suppressed rage.

For Gillman's narrator, the yellow
wallpaper becomes a text that she feels she must interpret. Representing the structure
of family, medicine, and tradition in which she is trapped, the narrator begins by
attempting to decipher the pattern of this symbol of domestic life that has her
confined.  As the story progresses, Gilman's narrator imagines herself watched by
"absurd, unblinking eyes" that are everywhere, enraging her--"I am getting angry enough
to do something desperate."  So, she finally retreats in her obsessive fantasy where she
has control, believing that she has freed herself as she has freed the woman behind the
paper: "I've got out at last."

Like Gilman's
narrator, Emily Grierson lives a life of repression under the rigid control of her
patriarch as well as the demands of her social standing in town.  (Emily herself has
been interpreted as a symbol of the decaying Old South.) She lives with her father who
has denied her suitors, and after his death, his presence is still upon her as she wears
his gold chain and ebony cane with the tarnished gold head, objects of her father.  In
addition, she keeps the old Negro man who has served her family.  When Emily does
attempt to break the restraints of her old life, she finds it difficult to do so.  For
one thing, the town perceives her as "a fallen monument" and an "idol in a niche" who is
passed "from generation to generation."  She has known no real life, she is likened to
inanimate objects. So, she clings to her father's body after his death, and is forced to
relinquish it for burial by the aldermen.

Thwarted in her
life, Emily goes with Homer Barron, only to be abandoned by him.  When he returns, Emily
sets up a situation in which she can have control:  She kills Homer in her obsession
with death.  The "rose for Emily" represents love, but also the medieval symbol of
secrecy.  Certainly, death is symbolic, too, in Faulkner's story as it represents the
end of the old South and of Emily who,kept in a childish state of ignorance all her
life,embraces death because it is all she has ever
known.

Thus, in William Faulkner's story, there are several
symbols that give significant meaning to the final obsessive act of Emily.  On the other
hand, in Gilman's story, one main symbol functions significantly as it transforms as the
narrator's mental condition spirals downward until reaching
insanity.

[See the  2 links below for more discussion on
symbolism in each story and a link for how to write a comparison/contrast
essay]