1. Understanding your texts through a contextual lens
NEA AO3
Understanding your texts through a contextual lens

2. What we are aiming for today:
One-to-one interviews with Mrs Taylor (aiming for 6 students) starting with those not choosing The Yellow Wallpaper.
Whilst I am doing that….
Those working with The Yellow Wallpaper will be working on three contextual tasks. You should make the tasks link to your chosen question / focus (e.g mental illness/ marriage etc). You may wish to work in pairs/group but ultimately your notes should be shaped towards your own focus.
Those not working with The Yellow Wallpaper: you will undertake contextual tasks to fit your own chosen texts. You will be guided as to what to look for on the next two slides.
You all have the same homework: to research and make notes on both texts in terms of their context (production and reception). See spider diagram slide to understand what to research. You will then use the most relevant and pertinent contextual details in your essay plan.

3. Three wider reading tasks to complete during this lesson:
1. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management chapter 1 chapter1.html
Those not studying YWP: a historical source informing you about attitudes at the time when your text was written.
2. Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour
Those not studying YWP: a text (excerpt or whole text/ poem/play/novel/short story) written around the time of your chosen text which echoes the same ideas/themes . Cunning googling will lead you to identify such texts - you will need to be resilient and explore, think of it as panning for gold.
3. Clip from the short film
Find a tv/film/stage adaptation / modernisation of your text and watch it or read reviews about it – find out how it interpreted your text.

4. Tv/ film/ stage adaptations?
AO3 context
Tv/ film/ stage adaptations?
Historical events/people at time of writing?
Writer's own views & experiences?
Socio-cultural views at time of writing?
Other texts by same author?
Literary traditions influencing writer? Literary conventions?
Contemporary reception? Reviews & critics?
Modern reception - text still relevant?

5. When was TYW written??????? 1892 The New England Magazine
California, US
Late 19th century
Fin-de-siècle gothic fiction
Title today’s notes ‘AO3 Context on The Yellow Wallpaper’ and add a title. Get used to making clear, consistent and referenced notes. You will work at your own pace this lesson but you need to complete all three tasks. Use scanning reading skills for task1.

6. 1. Read Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management chapter 1
Make one or two notes that help you explain why the narrator in TYW may have felt stifled by her domestic and maternal role.
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in Aimed at members of a rapidly expanding middle class, Beeton’s book was bought by (or for) women whose husbands decamped to the office every morning, leaving them at home to manage the children, the servants and the shopping.  For these women, Beeton’s book, with its systematic approach to domesticity, functioned as a how-to guide for middle-class living.   

7. 2. Kate Chopin ‘The Story of an Hour’
1898 (six years after TYW)

8. 3. Watch 3mins30 – 5 mins30
The Yellow Wallpaper 2011 directed by Alyssa Lundgren
How is John presented?
How is editing used?
How are sound effects used?
How has the director interpreted the narrator’s situation?