The Yellow Wallpaper Questions Flashcards
What did Gilman choose to use her personal experience?
To create a tale that is both a chilling description of one woman’s fall into madness and a potent symbolic narrative of the fate of creative women stifled by a paternalistic culture. Her real and own experience was needed for other female readers to believe her and do something about this.
What contrasts with johns practical and rational behaviour?
The narrator herself, she has a wide imagination and creativity that John will never understand or believe.
What does her treatment require?
That she does nothing active, and she is especially forbidden to partake in creative things like working and writing.
What did she feel about this and her treatment?
She felt that activity, freedom and interesting work would help her condition and reveals that she has begun her secret journal in order to ‘relieve her mind’.
What are the key elements usually expected in a gothic story?
Odd romance Women in distress Blood Ruins of buildings Nightmares Mental torment Plot involves hidden secretes which threaten the protagonist Shadows Setting of scene- authors keep this consistent mood by hinting the weather and dark subjects. Foreshadowing Symbolism and metaphorical objects
What’s so significant on the narrators brother and husband both being rational doctors. Comment on feminist points.
The narrator having no people who understand her inner feelings and thoughts is very hard with two doctors. Gilman develops the readers need for a female doctor who will understand the narrator. It almost suggests that at that time, women were in bad luck to develop a mental illness, there was absolutely no one to help them. Gilman might have had it like this to start presenting her attitudes towards women and how they had no help if they got into a situation like this. As a reader we sympathise with the narrator who is stuck between two men as nowadays there is a cure.
How is john presented in the first few days and why
Keep in mind the quotes,
‘ blessed little goose’
‘ you know the place is doing you good’
John is presented as nothing but a controlling and patronising husband. ‘ Blessed little goose’ suggests that he is being very patronising and in a way manipulating her mind, changing the way she thinks to suit his way. Gilman manages to create a relationship like a little girl and man by using commanding words like ‘ don’t go, don’t do and little girl’.
What else’s does Gilman combine with her feminist story to induce the readers?
Gilman also draws on the tradition of the gothic romances of the late 18th century which often featured spooky old mansions and young heroines determined to uncover their secret.
