Note: Comparative Essays due today!
"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 that there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as possible,' to 'have but two hours' intelligent life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.' This was in 1887…"
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall-paper," 1913
"Every kind of creature is developed by the exercise of its functions. If denied the exercise of its functions, it can not develop in the fullest degree."
—Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman),
from Hearing of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., January 28, 1896
Group 1 (Amelia, Justin, Andrew, Gavin): Explore - "Gender and the Nineteenth Century Home" and "Masculine Superiority Fever": Making Sense of "Spheres"
Group 2 (Chris, Nick, Oleg): Explore - "Light of the Home" image and "Motherhood" essay
Group 3 (Oumnia, Courtney, Shelby, Chantelle): Explore - "Puss in the Corner" and Gilman's brief suffrage commentary in the Votes for Women Collection: (Search by keyword "Gilman"; text under "Charlotte Perkins Stetson, of California)
After exploring the websites in your groups, add a comment to this lecture post. Address these questions (you should have a paragraph as a response):
- How do the primary documents on these websites portray the roles of middle-class men and women in the early- to mid-nineteenth century?
- What do you think of these roles?
- How are the roles similar or different from today's roles for women?
Two online texts for "The Yellow Wallpaper" are available: the full text of "The Yellow Wall-paper" (1899 edition), available online at the University of Virginia Library's Electronic Text Center via EDSITEment reviewed Center for the Liberal Arts, or the original New England Magazine version, available online at the Library of Congress' Nineteenth Century in Print Collection (periodicals).
In groups, answer the questions contained in the following table and post your answers here as a group comment. Remember to include all group members' names in your comment.
With a partner, choose TWO of the following quotations from The Yellow Wallpaper and respond to the questions. Post your thoughts here as a blog comment.
- "It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity but that would be asking too much of fate!"
- Questions:
- How would you describe the story's setting?
- How and why is the setting significant?
2. "John is a physician, and—perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster."
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Questions:
- How would you describe the narrator's husband?
- What is the narrator's style of writing? What is her tone?
Questions:
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- What does the narrator believe would be the best cure for her?
- How does this contrast with what her husband and brother say? Cite additional passages from the story.
4. "There comes John, and I must put this away-he hates to have me write a word."
- Questions:
- What is the narrative style of this story? What is the effect of this journal style narrative in developing the main character?
- How does it influence how the reader understands the main character?
5. "Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, -to dress and entertain, and order things. It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper!At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
- He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.
"You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental." "Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms there."
Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things. It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.
Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous old fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try."
Questions:
- How does the narration mimic the narrator's mental state?
- Point out digressions and discuss why the narrator might digress during her account. Review the 1867 Godey's quote from the "Motherhood" essay in Lesson One ("About every true mother there is a sanctity of martyrdom- and when she is no more in the body, her children see her with the ring of light around her head."). Compare this description to the narrator's role of mother.
6. "And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head."
- Question:
- What does this passage suggest about the relationship between the narrator and her husband?
- How would you characterize the narrator?
- How would you characterize the husband?
- Cite another passage from your reading/notes to support your claims. You might compare the narrator's and John's relationship to the relationship in the "Puss in the Corner" poem.
7. Section 3, "And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!"
- Questions:
- What is the significance of the woman behind the yellow wall-paper?
- To aid discussion for the above question, compare the narrator's feelings about the wall-paper to the tone and message of the 1890 cartoon, For the benefit of the girl about to graduate.
8. "What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!"I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
- 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!"
Questions:
- What does the narrator mean by, "I got out at last?"
- What does the ending of this story suggest about the woman behind the wall-paper?
- How are this woman and the wall-paper itself symbolic?
- Discuss the metaphor of the window in relationship to "getting out."
Homework:
We'll be in the same lab (room 258). We will read Inanimate Alice in class.
