1. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman ENG 273: World Literature

2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)  1880s  Gave birth to a daughter  Suffered depression  Treated by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell  “Rest Cure” – bed rest, confinement, and isolation  Dedication to domestic duties  Avoid intellectual and artistic work  Unable to follow the doctor’s recommendations  Health restored after divorce  Important writer in the Women’s Movement  Economic basis for inequality  Women’s work inside the home was unpaid and this led to dependency  Solution: cooking, cleaning, and childcare should be done outside the home and paid for

3. Characters  The narrator  Writes in a journal  John – the narrator’s husband  A doctor  Jennie – John’s sister  Takes care of the household  The woman in the wallpaper

4. Plot  The family rented a home for three months so the narrator can recover from her “nervous condition”  The narrator spends most of her time in the room alone  She secretly writes in her journal  The narrator becomes obsessed with the pattern of the wallpaper  Begins to see women trapped behind the patterns

5.  View of women in 19 th Century America  Proper place in the home  Proper role of wife and mother  Proper behavior is to be physically and mentally weak  Deviation from societal expectations  Too much imagination is seen as abnormal  Too much emotion is diagnosed as the medical condition “hysteria”  Intellectual or artistic ambition are not supported  Clash between societal expectation and women’s experience  Male power versus female experience  Confinement versus “creeping”  Being trapped versus being liberated  Action versus inertia  Insanity versus imagination  Silence versus speech/writing Key Themes