THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

Charlotte Perkins Gilman Charlotte Perkins Gilman had a difficult childhood after her father abandoned her family while she was still an infant. Her aunts, including prominent suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and author Harriet Beecher Stowe, helped to support her mother through this period.

In 1884 she married Charles Walter Stetson and gave birth to their only child, a daughter. After the birth of her daughter, she suffered from post-partum depression and was prescribed an unsuccessful ‘rest-cure’ by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who suggested that she focus on domestic duties and avoid intellectual activity.

She separated from her husband in 1888 and moved to Pasadena, California and became an active voice in the feminist movement, publishing extensively on the role of women in the household. She was married again in 1900, to her first cousin Houghton Gilman. In 1932 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and, in 1935, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of chloroform, which she viewed as preferable to death by cancer.

What is the narrator’s name? What is the narrator’s husband’s profession? What seems to be the medical treatment prescribed for the narrator’s “nervous depression” and “slight hysterical tendency”? Why won’t John agree to take down the “yellow wall-paper” from the room? What does the narrator believe is trapped in the wallpaper? What happens to it and her at the end of the story? What are the narrator’s feelings toward her husband? What does this story suggest is the role of women during the time period (late C19th/early C20th)? Is John a good guy, bad guy, or a little of both? What message is Gilman trying to present by leaving her main character in the bizarre situation we find her in at the end of the story?

Page 2: What do you learn about the house? List four points. The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden – large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them. There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now. There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years. That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don’t care – there is something strange about the house – I can feel it.

In groups, devise a Q1 for the rest of the class to complete: QUESTION 1 PRACTICE In groups, devise a Q1 for the rest of the class to complete: Group 1: pages 4-6 Group 2: pages 7-9 Group 3: pages 10-12 Group 4: pages 13-15 Group 5: pages 16-18

DRAMATIC STRUCTURE Climax Rising Action Falling Action Denouement Exposition Climax Rising Action Falling Action Denouement Explain this to the class: Exposition – introducing the background information of characters / events Rising Action – build up of events leading to the climax, increases interest. Climax – the turning point in the story Falling action – conflict begins to be resolved, normally involves a final moment of suspense. Denouement – the conclusion of a story. Explain that this can also be applied to their creative writing.

STRUCTURAL FOCUS Each group will be focusing on one part of the story. In groups, apply the dramatic structure for the section and answer the following questions. What is the main subject/issue of the section? How does the narrator’s condition develop from the beginning of the section to the end? How has she changed from the end of the previous section to the end of this section? Do the developments in the narrator’s condition correspond to the way the wallpaper “behaves?” What part of the dramatic structure of the whole story does your section fit in? In the new groups, share the findings and complete the table.

Climax Rising Action Falling Action Denouement Exposition The depressed narrator has been isolated on doctor's orders. She takes a dislike to the yellow wallpaper in her room. She becomes obsessed with the pattern of the wallpaper. She becomes convinced a woman is trapped behind the pattern. She locks herself in the room and peels away the wallpaper. John faints in her path as she creeps along the wall. The narrator continues to crawl along the wall. Exposition Climax Rising Action Falling Action Denouement Exposition – introducing the background information of characters / events Rising Action – build up of events leading to the climax, increases interest. Climax – the turning point in the story Falling action – conflict begins to be resolved, normally involves a final moment of suspense. Denouement – the conclusion of a story.

How has the writer structured the text to interest readers? Based on your given section, write a response as a group. Question 3: Structural Analysis Level Skills Descriptor 4   Perceptive, detailed 7-8 marks Analyses the effects of the writer’s choices of structure Selects a judicious range of quotations Uses sophisticated subject terminology accurately 3 Clear, relevant 5-6 marks Clearly explains the effects of the writer’s choices of structure Selects a range of relevant quotations Uses subject terminology accurately

How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader? Lord of the Flies Annotate the text for 10 minutes, and write a response in 10 minutes to the question:  How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?

"Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' " Many and many a reader has asked [why I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper]. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it. Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and—begging my pardon— had I been there? Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia—and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887.

I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over. Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again—work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite—ultimately recovering some measure of power. Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it. The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate—so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered. But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading "The Yellow Wallpaper." It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.

Feminist Criticism Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.” This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women.” This misogyny can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example [...] is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only.” Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women writers."

Feminist Approaches Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values. All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or feminine). All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.

How is the relationship between men and women portrayed? What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)? How are male and female roles defined? What constitutes masculinity and femininity? How do characters embody these traits? Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them? What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy? What does the work say about women's creativity? What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy? What role the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?

Feminist Criticism of The Yellow Wallpaper Independently, answer the questions viewing the short story from a feminist approach. Based on your findings, choose one of the following topics to discuss in an essay: The relationship between the “rest-cure” and the narrator’s insanity The symbolism of the wallpaper & the woman behind it The representation of men and the medical field In addition to quotations from the text, include supporting evidence from the following sources: “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” “Speech and Silence in The Yellow Wallpaper” Contextual information sheets: author’s biography, “Nervous diseases,” Women in the 19th century The essay should be 650-800 words in length