Relationships become something that almost everyone experiences at some point in their lives. Each individual handles them differently and no two relationships work the same. Minimal communication has the worst consequences on a relationship, but when a lack of equality develops in a relationship it can also lead to harmful results. A relationship or marriage in which men control women occurs more often than one in which the woman is in control. Men are seen as more powerful and more aggressive in our society, and Mark Peel illustrates this in an essay on male social workers in the 1920s where “Perhaps [men were] more interested in assistance than in male effort , or able to connect caregiving and manhood in a way that many men still find difficult in the new century, they could have found a different way to be men” (Peel 294). In a society like this, these males found it very difficult to retain their power due to the way others made judgments about their lifestyle. A good nineteenth-century example of a marriage in which there is a lack of communication, the woman is isolated, and the man dominates is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This mistreatment of women in marriage can have a negative effect on the woman, and the story demonstrates this by showing how much the narrator rambles. The absence of meaningful communication was a key element in why the narrator's illness became so severe. John, the narrator's husband, gave the impression of being ashamed of his wife's illness. The narrator writes about a conversation between her and her husband and reveals, “He says no one but me can help me out of this situation, I have to use my will and self-control and no… middle of paper….. .age, power and negotiation in nineteenth-century Chile." Radical History Review70 (1998): 27. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 31 October 2011. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935. The Yellow WallpaperElectronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, Kelly Carolyn. “Class Act (resses).” Theater History Studies 31. (2011): Humanities International Web. Jane. “Nervous women and noble savages: the other” romanticized in patent medicine advertising in nineteenth-century United States. Journal of Popular Culture 41.5 (2008): 784-808 EBSCO Web. Peel, Mark. “Male Social Workers and the Anxieties of Female Authority: Boston and Minneapolis, 1920-1940.” Journal of Men's Studies 15.3 (2007): 282-294. Comprehensive humanities international. EBSCO. Network. October 26. 2011.