How are Elisa in "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck and the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" similar?

I would want to approach this question by talking about
the way that Eliza and the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" are both trapped in
various ways, and how their position of a woman contributes to this
entrapment.

Eliza in "The Chrysanthemums" is definitely a
character who feels hemmed in. Note the way that nature itself has "closed off" the
Salinas Valley from everything else through the "high grey-flannel fog of winter" that
traps Eliza from the outside world. We can perhaps understand the way that she is
trapped and inhibited: physically, emotionally and spiritually. All it takes is the
visiting tinker to show a bit of interest in her chrysanthemums and she shows that she
is desperate to reach out and experience some form of human
connection:

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Kneeling there, her hand went out toward his legs
in the greasy black trousers. Her hesistant fingers almost touched the cloth. Then her
hand dropped to the ground. She crouched low like a fawning
dog.

We see the huge
emotional isolation that encompasses her life and how, when she realises that her gift
of the chrysanthemums had been thrown to one side by this man, she is reduced to "crying
weakly--like an old woman."

In the same way, the narrator
of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is trapped inside her insanity, which is a condition that is
worsened thanks to her husband and his belief that he knows what is best for his sick
wife. She is desperate to leave the room and to write, and yet at every turn the husband
unknowingly exacerbates her condition, until she identifies so strongly with the woman
that she sees in the wallpaper that she becomes that woman: constrained, trapped and
suffocated, intellectually, emotionally and physically. Note what she says towards the
end of the story:

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I suppose I shall have to get back behind the
pattern when it comes night, and that is
hard!

She has identified so
strongly with the woman that she sees trying to escape from behind the wallpaper and the
way that she symbolises pent up female frustration that she has literally become that
woman.

Thus both characters from these excellent short
stories show themselves to be trapped and constrained in a variety of different
ways.