1. The Yellow Wallpaper

2. Summary The narrator, whose doctor-husband has prescribed a “rest cure” for her depression, keeps a secret diary of a summer spent mostly in bed at a rented country home. She grows increasingly obsessed with the room’s yellow wallpaper, imagining a woman trapped in it and wanting to free her by peeling off the paper. Finally, her husband finds her creeping around the room, certain she has freed herself from the torn-off paper.

3. 3 What is a Rest Cure? Influential American neurologist Silas Mitchell developed the rest cure in the late 1800s for the treatment of hysteria, neurasthenia and other nervous illnesses. It became widely used in the US and UK, but was prescribed more often for women than men. Some patients and doctors considered the cure worse than the disease. The rest cure usually lasted six to eight weeks. It involved isolation from friends and family. It also enforced bed rest, and nearly constant feeding on a fatty, milk-based diet. Nurses cleaned and fed them, and turned them over in bed. Doctors used massage and electrotherapy to maintain muscle tone. Patients were sometimes prohibited from talking, reading, writing and even sewing.

4. Rest Cure & ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ The implicit point was the neurologist breaking his (almost always female) patient’s will. Some outspoken and independent women received the rest cure. These included writers Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Gilman. They reacted fiercely against the treatment and doctors practicing it, and wrote about the experience. Later feminist scholars argued the rest cure reinforced an archaic and oppressive notion that women should submit unquestioningly to male authority because it was good for their health. He was Gilman's doctor and his use of a rest cure on her provided the idea for "The Yellow Wallpaper", a short story in which the narrator is driven insane by her rest cure. His treatment was also used on Virginia Woolf.

5. Inspiration An exaggerated account of the author’s personal experiences in 1887, shortly after the birth of her daughter Gilman began to suffer from serious depression and fatigue and was diagnosed with neurasthenia and prescribed a “rest cure” of forced inactivity. Gilman was forced to cease all forms of creative activity, including writing, for the rest of her life. The goal of the treatment was to promote domesticity and calm her agitated nerves. Gilman attempted to endure the “rest cure” treatment and did not write or work for three months. Eventually, she felt herself beginning to go slowly insane from the inactivity and, at one point, was reduced to crawling under her bed holding a rag doll.

6. Critical Reaction The public reaction to the story was strong, if mixed. In many circles, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was perceived as nothing more than a horror story, stemming from the gothic example of Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley. It was not until the 1970s that the story was also recognized as a feminist narrative worthy of historical and literary scholarship.

7. Setting: Victorian Era Setting: Victorian Era Late 1880s A woman’s role = wife and mother Women could not vote or own property Women were to be “pure, pious, domestic and submissive.”

8. Victorian Era Feminist movementThe Feminist movement had just begun as a radical, fringe ideology, largely dismissed by the mainstream. Women could not live on their own; their husbands or fathers served as their guardians

9. Victorian Women: Queen Victoria herself said : "I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights', with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to 'unsex' themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection."

10. Is the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, physically or mentally ill? post-partum depressionThe narrator has recently given birth; she may be suffering from post-partum depression The narrator mentions that she has been diagnosed with “A slight hysterical tendency,” and was being treated as most women of her time would be: with the Rest Cure.

11. Characters in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Narrator: The narrator (whose name we learn at the end is Jane) is married to John and dominated by him. As she recuperates with neurasthenia in a room in a rented mansion, he does not allow her to do anything but rest, and especially forbids her from the creative work of writing. She eventually goes completely crazy.

12. Characters John: John, a doctor, is married to the narrator, but he treats her more like an infant. He frequently refers to her with the diminutive tag of "'little,'" and acts as if she cannot make any decisions on her own. Modeled on Silas Weir Mitchell, the doctor who prescribed Gilman an ineffective "rest cure" in 1887, John forbids the narrator from working on anything creative while she recovers. He believes in a strict divide between men and women.

13. Characters Jennie: John's sister, Jennie is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper who wants nothing else out of life. Mary: The nanny, Mary takes care of the narrator and John's baby. With her name a possible allusion to the Virgin Mary, Mary is the perfect mother-surrogate for the narrator.

14. Characters Woman in the wallpaper: Although the narrator eventually believes she sees many women in the yellow wallpaper, she centers on one. The woman appears trapped within the bar-like pattern of the wallpaper, and she shakes the pattern as she tries to break out (and eventually succeeds). The woman's habit of "creeping" about suggests that she, and other early feminists, must hide in the shadows for now while they plot their strategy, but soon will be able to stand tall.

15. Style  Unreliable narrator  Style of prose  narration becomes breathless, manic  Does the narrator go insane or does she maintain her sanity by interacting with the only stimulus she has—the wallpaper?

16. Important Themes  Patriarchy & the subjugation of women in marriage (note how John patronizes her)  Childlike dependency of women  Superiority of physicians  Need for work, intellectual stimulation and opportunities to express creativity.

17. Symbols: The house haunted house…that would be asking too much of fate! And why has it stood so long untenanted? It is quite alone there is something strange about the house—I can feel it. The narrator is ‘alone … isolated … haunted … ‘ so these quotes show the house is symbolic of her. These words are typical of Gothic literature – they help to foreshadow the terror which will follow.

18. The House… kept hidden away in an attic.In Victorian times, insane relatives would have been kept hidden away in an attic. Note how she mentions fate, as if something is going to happen to her: “but that would be asking too much of fate!”

19. The Wallpaper  Read the following quotes about the wallpaper:  It is stripped off—the paper— in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down.  I never saw a worse paper in my life.  What is the Wallpaper doing to her?

20. The Wallpaper  sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.  The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.  It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.  What is the Wallpaper doing to her?

21. The Wallpaper This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! What is the Wallpaper doing to her?

22. The Wallpaper The wallpaper is stimulating her senses, as she has nothing else to do All the emotional and intellectual stimulation she has comes from the wallpaper What is the wallpaper doing to her?

23. Who is the woman in the wallpaper? Could the woman be the narrator’s shadow? Could it represent the narrator herself, trapped inside the wallpaper? (Just as the wallpaper has trapped the narrator’s mind.)

24. Who is the woman in the wallpaper? Like the narrator herself, the woman is trapped within a suffocating domestic “pattern” from which no escape is possible…however, she tears off the paper to free the woman (and herself.)

25. Resolution: Victim or Victor? “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!” –The meaning of the last paragraph has been the subject of a great deal of critical debate. –Some critics see this as a point where the narrator triumphs over her husband and the wallpaper. –Others see this as a point where the narrator fails since she has finally been driven insane by the paper and not escaped the room. What do you think?

26. Theme: Work vs Rest “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” “sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus” – What do these quotes reveal about the narrator’s state of mind? – A: Clearly, the narrator understands that she needs activity, rather than isolation and “rest”

27. Work vs Rest “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.” What would have happened if the narrator had had ‘stimulating people’ and ‘advice and companionship’ made available to her?

28. Modern Connection What do you think is most likely the cause of the narrator’s “hysteria”? If you were a doctor, what would be your diagnosis? Do you think modern medicine recognizes and treats psychological illnesses equally to physical ones? Is there still a stigma attached to emotional or psychological disorders? More so than being diabetic or having high blood pressure? How does gender affect the stigma, if any?