1000 words book analysis, due 48 hours
Nancy 00001
ENGL101CWeek2B-CharacterandGender-YellowWallpaper.pptxThe yellow wallpaper
ENGL101 – sarah brown
The element of character
Characters are the fictional people within the story.
A main character/protagonist is the central figure in the story. We typically either see them through the first-person (their internal thoughts in the “I” mode) or the third person (he went/she said).
If a character’s perspective or action changes in the story, they are considered a dynamic character. If they remain the same throughout, they are considered a static character.
Gender & literature
DEFINITION: Gender identity, an individual’s self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex. Gender identity develops by means of parental example, social reinforcement, and language. (Britannica)
Studying characters in literature gives us insight into the cultural context of their gender roles.
For example, what does it mean to be a man, woman, or non-binary person in a particular time and place? What kind of expectations and duties must a character take on due to their gender? Whose stories are told?
Charlotte perkins gilman
American (b. 1860, Connecticut)
Early feminist; lecturer on “social topics as labour, ethics, and woman’s place” (Britannica)
Suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her child. At the time, the prescription was a “rest cure” popularized by Silas Weir Mitchell
Context: “the yellow wallpaper”
In 19th-century Britain, women underwent education to “prepare them for this role of ‘Angel in the House’. Rather than attracting a husband through their domestic abilities, middle-class girls were coached in what were known as ‘accomplishments’” such as music, singing, drawing (British Library)
Hysteria was a term used to describe “a wide variety of symptoms, thought to be particularly prevalent among women, that indicated emotional disturbance” (NA 327)
Introductory story notes
Gothic setting: “A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house…standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village” (5-7)
Elements of the surreal: “The faint figure behind [the wallpaper] seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (25)
Point-of-view: First person, with emphasis on the internal thoughts of the unnamed narrator. EX: “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza…but John would not hear of it” (9)
Questions about character
What are the differences in character between John and the narrator? How are each of them described?
How are the characters conditioned by their time and place? What do the women characters in the story do, compared to the male characters?
symbolism
The wallpaper:
”Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John’s, and she wished we would be more careful” (30)
“There comes John, and I must put this away – he hates to have me write a word.” (11 – in reference to her writing)
What are the symbolic connections between the wallpaper and the paper on which the narrator writes her thoughts and feelings (ie. this story) down?
Symbolism
The ‘woman’ in the wallpaper:
“I think that woman gets out in the daytime!...She is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.” (35)
“I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her! But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!” (40)
How does the narrator identify with the woman in the wallpaper? What similarities do they share?
Does the rope have any more sinister associations?
Setting
What is the significance of the Gothic house setting? How does it contribute to the mood of the story?
What can be analyzed in the descriptions of the room the narrator is confined to?
“The colour is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow” (10)
“I never saw such ravages as the children have made here. The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots” (16)
Potential themes
The difficulty of gender roles for women
There “is no doubt that the narrator dwells in the middle of Patriarchy. She is living in ‘ancestral halls,’ has just given birth to a boy, is surrounded by men – her husband, her brother, and somewhere in the background, Weir Mitchell – and even the female or females in the house appear to be cardboard figures cut out by the patriarchy” (309)
Ford, Karen. “‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Women's Discourse.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 4, no. 2, 1985, pp. 309–314. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/463709.
The mistreatment of mental illness
- The “rest cure,” a gendered prescription of the time, often did more harm than good
The search for self-expression
- The narrator represents an artist figure who must ”consume herself” in her art and writing in order to feel satisfied
