Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper" Flashcards
Who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
time period and relevant historical context “The Yellow Wallpaper”
published 1892, Guilded Age, rapid industrialization, economic growth, and significant social change, Cult of Domesticity, “rest cure” isolation and forced bedrest for women with mental illness, “new woman” independent, educated, career-minded women who challenged traditional gender roles
plot summary “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Narrator is sick after giving birth to her son. Her husband, John, is a physician who prescribes her to rest while they stay in a vacation home while their own house is under construction. Their bedroom has a wallpaper that the narrator hates at first but eventually grows obsessed with, believing there is a woman trapped inside. Her paranoia grows as she begins to believe John and his sister Jennie see something as well. This culminates in her ripping off the wallpaper and freeing the ‘woman’ commonly interpreted as herself. John enters and faints.
key characters “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Narrator
John (husband)
Mary (nany)
Jennie (housekeeper and John’s sister)
Mary (nanny for the baby)
baby
‘woman in the wallpaper’
notable formal or stylistic elements “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Journals/confessions, first person, vignettes, abrupt endings and beginnings
important themes and recurring motifs “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Women’s oppression in marriage and society, misunderstanding of mental illness
Yellow wall-paper as a symbol for mental entrapment
literary ‘schools’ or genres; analytic concepts; relevance to history “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Gothic literature, feminist literature, psychological realism
2-3 quotation samples “The Yellow Wallpaper”
other useful hints ID “The Yellow Wallpaper”
journal-style writing, descent into paranoia, “John says”
