In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper", and Anton Chekhov's, "The Darling", we are introduced to main characters with lives surrounded by control. In Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper", the main character, which remains nameless, is controlled by her husband, John. He tells her what she is and is not allowed to do, where she is to live, and that is she is not permitted to see her own child. In Chekhov's, "The Darling", the main character, Olenka, allows her own opinions and thoughts to be those of her loved ones.

When John puts the narrator into the room, she writes in despite of him telling her that she should not. At the end of her first passage, the narrator tells us, "There comes John, and I must put this away - he hates to have me write a word". The narrator was told that writing and any other intellectual activity would exhaust her. The only thing that exhausts her about it is hiding it from them. The narrator tells us, "I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal - having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition". Conrad Shumaker suggests that John believes that if someone uses too much

Olenka was alone shortly after marring the veterinary surgeon, when he departed to Siberia with his regiment. Being alone she "thought of nothing, wished for nothing." Without a man to structure her thoughts, she could not have any. It was as if Olenka never learned how to think for herself. Her thoughts were always for someone beside herself. When Olenka was alone "she had no opinions of any sort. She saw the objects about her and understood what she saw, but could not form any opinion about them, and did not know what to talk about." Olenka had nothing to make conversation and if she would make conversation, she could not give her opinion.

After Pustovalov dies, she only stays alone for six months. "It was evident that she could not live a year without some attachment." Olenka then marries a veterinary surgeon. "She repeated the veterinary surgeon's words, and was of the same opinion as he about everything." This would embarrass him that she would try to talk about animals and things as if she knew about them. "I've asked you before not to talk about what you don't understand. When we veterinary surgeons are talking among ourselves, please don't put your word in. It's really annoying." When he would tell her this she would ask, "But, Volodichka, what am I to talk about." Olenka had nothing in her life meaningful to herself that was worth bring up in conversation. She would surround her life around her husband and his whole life. "She wanted a love that would absorb her whole being, her whole soul and reason - that would give her ideas and an object in life, and would warm her old blood."

Only three months after Kukin dies, she meets Pustovalov, a timber merchant, and marries him. She started talking about timber as if "she had been in the timber trade for ages and ages, and that the most important and necessary thing in life was timber." She even "dreamed of perfect

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Approximate Word count = 1287
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)