How would you describe the role of women in Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums," Hurston's "Sweat" and Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

In all three of the stories you ask about – “The Yellow
Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; “The Chrysanthemums,” by John Steinbeck; and
“Sweat,” by Zora Neale Hurston” – women are presented mainly as dissatisfied
victims.

• In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman is
  rather economically privileged, but it is partly this privilege that leads to her sense
  of social and mental isolation.  She is undergoing a “rest cure” that involves no real
  work and no real mental stimulation, but this supposed “cure” helps lead to an
  increasing mental breakdown.  Ironically, if the woman in this story were outside,
  working, interacting with other people, and feeling productive in some way, she might
  feel more mentally healthy.  Her husband (who is, ironically, a doctor) exercises great
  control over her life, and she has very little contact with others, especially other
  women.  Her husband seems to mean well, but he has no idea how the “treatment” he
  endorses is contributing to his wife’s mental collapse. At the end of the story, the
  woman has literally been driven crazy by her role as an oppressed female.
  


• In “Chrysanthemums,” Elisa Allen does do physical work
  outside (unlike the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper”) and also seems less isolated from
  her husband. They are not a wealthy couple (unlike the couple in “The Yellow Wallpaper”)
  but might instead be considered members of the lower middle class. Even in this story,
  however, Elisa feels somewhat isolated and unappreciated; she is not especially content
  with her drab, routine existence. Thus, when a travelling male “fixer” stops at her
  farm, she is intrigued by this representative from the outside world and they engage in
  extended conversation. A talented gardener, she eventually gives him some
  chrysanthemums, which he seems to admire.  Only later does she discover that the flowers
  have been tossed onto the road, although the tinker has kept the pot. At the end of the
  story, Elisa, accompanied by a husband who loves her but cannot appreciate her needs,
  weeps in loneliness.


• In “Sweat,” a poor black woman named
  Delia Jones, who works harder than either of the other two women, is married to a
  genuinely abusive husband named Sykes. Unlike the men in the previously mentioned
  stories, he is deliberately and almost sadistically unkind; he makes no pretense of even
  caring for his wife but instead treats her like a slave. Of the three wives in the three
  stories, Delia is by far the most obviously oppressed, as she herself implies in the
  following passage:

readability="14">

"Looka heah, Sykes, you done gone too fur. Ah
been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah been takin' in washin' for fifteen years.
Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and
sweat!"

Similarly, of the
three husbands presented, Sykes is by far the least attractive and most purposefully
malicious. The husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is well-meaning but ignorant; the
husband in “The Chrysanthemums” is well-meaning but a bit obtuse; but the husband in
“Sweat” is a genuine (if somewhat cartoonish) villain for whom the reader finally feels
little if any sympathy.

• The three stories, then,
  present oppressed women whose oppression varies greatly according to their invididual
  circumstances.  The stories offer many opportunities for detailed comparisons and
  contrasts.