The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper”—Questions For E&C with Responses

  1. How does each of the first seven sentences foreshadow a later development in the story?

We are launched into the setting of the story from the very beginning. When it comes to elements of fiction, setting is absolutely essential and fundamental to this story. The old gothic like, dilapidated mansion creates a very intense and eerie sort of atmosphere that becomes compounded day-after-day by the worst wallpaper in the history of wallpaper. I still want to find a roll of it somewhere ☺

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  1. What does Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggest about middle class women’s place and role(s) in this society?

The story was published in 1892 and Gilman had undergone the “rest cure” with specialist Silas Weir Mitchell (who is mentioned in the story) in 1887. Society during this period was heavily patriarchal and women had no power, control or choice when it came to their diagnosis or cure. Women were expected to submit unquestioningly to male authority because it was supposedly good for their health.  To make matters worse, the narrator’s physician is her husband which gives him all the power and keeps her completely powerless over her own recovery.

  1. How and why is the narrator consistently treated like a child?

The narrator is constantly infantilized by John and made to feel like an errant child rather than a grown woman who is suffering from post-partum depression. He can control her easier by treating her like a child (pay particular attention to his dialogue with his wife). Bear in mind the term post-partum depression did not exist during the era/age when Gilman was writing this story. In fact, Postpartum was not being dealt with properly by hospitals until the mid-twentieth century. One of the reasons may have been that only about 15% of women suffer from P.P.D, but can you imagine the stigma and shame that went with it during Gilman’s age/era? Isolated from your newborn, even the most positive women would begin to question their maternal and child rearing abilities. Thankfully, hospitals are on top of P.P.D today.

  1. What is the narrative style of this story? What is the effect of this journal style narrative in developing the main character?

I love the narrative style of this story as it makes us co-conspirators with the narrator. It is first person of course, but it travels from past to present at times. It is epistolary (diary like in style) and it is a very intimate account of the mental erosion and attrition of our narrators mind. At one point she even says to her readers, “I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.” The people in this case that the narrator is referring to is us (her readers). The narrative style gives us an inside look into the narrator’s gradual mental decline and it makes it easy for us to side with her.

  1. How would you describe the narrator’s husband? What does the narrator believe would be the best cure for her? Can you love someone and unintentionally still smother them emotionally?

He is absolutely ignoring his patient (his wife). He (or probably Jennie) is over medicating the narrator and exacerbating her depression. In fact he is an awful doctor. It appears as if he got a second opinion from his brother who is also a doctor His diagnosis is a temporary nervous depression—a slightly hysterical tendency. No woman suffering from P.P.D (then or now) would be happy with the second part of that diagnosis☺ John smothers his wife with love purely for his own benefit. He has failed to get to the root of the problem, and he has failed as a doctor in the most important case of his career.

  1. What clue does the narrator’s repeated lament, “what can one do?” give us about her personality? Describe other aspects of the woman’s personality that are revealed in the opening of the story. What conflicting emotions is she having toward her husband, her condition, and the mansion?

She is rather submissive for a lot of the story until the end. She even admits at one point that she fails to adequately argue her case for leaving due to her lack of progress/recovery. She actually knows John is lying to her and she even lies to herself at times (saying that she is getting better) since her writings could be discovered by Jennie at any stage. She does not trust Jennie as Jennie acts as a spy for John when he is at work. We can also presume that Jennie is giving the narrator the worthless medicine that is confusing her mind day-after-day since John cannot be there during the day. B.T.W it appears as if the narrator’s child is not even there, and a woman named Mary has been assigned to take care of the narrator’s child while she recovers. The failed cure is far worse than the P.P.D at this juncture ☹

  1. How would you characterize the narrator’s initial reaction to, and description of, the wallpaper?

It is colorful, lyrical and incredibly descriptive. It is exactly what you would expect from the observant eye of a writer. Writers tend to have words and sentences swirling through their stream of consciousness all day. Our narrators’ response is lyrically profound and even poetic (prose poetry) in places. It is one of the greatest descriptions of wallpaper in the history of wallpaper. I would give anything to find a roll of this wallpaper ☺

  1. Describe the narrator’s state after the first two weeks of residence. Has John’s relationship with his wife changed at all?

As previously stated, the narrator is aware that John (or/nor Jennie) are not being truthful with her but she has to appease them. John talks about using “will” and self-control” to overcome P.P.D. This is nonsense of course. At this point our narrator is neither invested in her recovery, nor does she believe in it. John remains the same throughout until he is “astonished” at the end.

  1. Who is Jennie? What is her relationship to the narrator, and what is her function in the story?

Jennie is John’s sister. The narrator mentions servants towards the end of the story. She could be imaging this, or John may have hired a cook and a cleaner for the three months that they are renting this place. If the latter is true, it suggests that Jennie’s only job is to deliver meals and medication to the narrator during the day while John is working.

  1. How does the narrator alter her description of the wallpaper? Is it fair to say that the wallpaper has become more dominant in her day-to-day routine? Explain.

The narrator is quickly perplexed, mesmerized and eventually distressed and obsessed by the wallpaper. She personifies and animates the images and female forms that she discovers in the terrible and terrific pattern. The social isolation has actually expanded the visual borders and limits of her imagination.

 

 

  1. Just prior to the Fourth of July, what does the narrator admit about the wallpaper? What clues does Gilman gives us that suggest her narrator is in an increasingly agitated state? Is she finding it more and more difficult to communicate? Explain.

We learn that light has an effect on how the narrator views and interacts with the figure/s she sees in the pattern on the wallpaper. Her channels of adult communication with John are starting to dry up at this point, and she is running into a cul de sac when it comes to arguing for leaving earlier than planned. In essence, she has no agency in her own recovery.

  1. How does the narrator try to reach out to her husband? What is his reaction? Is this her last contact with sanity? Do you think John really has no comprehension of the seriousness of her illness?

John treats her more like a patient than his wife, which is why ones spouse should never be ones doctor. Look carefully at their late night dialogue when the narrator wakes John up to talk to him. She almost begs him to move her to a room downstairs. He keeps her in a room with the bed nailed to the floor, and with bars on the window. There is also a gate at the top of the stairs (presumably for kids) but it adds to John’s constant infantilization of the narrator. Some readers think the house was an old mental facility, but bars on the second floor of a house this size, and a gate at the top of the stairs would not have been uncommon in old manor houses where young kids were present. The nailed bed that has already been gnawed at suggests that the narrator is not the first patient to be isolated in this residence for P.P.D or other mental health issues.

 

 

  1. Whom does the narrator see in the wallpaper? How have her perceptions of John and Jennie changed from the beginning of the story?

She sees herself of course and she is the one creating all of those shadows. Bear in mind, she is over medicated and she seems particularly sensitive to all kinds of light. By the end, she has no trust or belief left in John and Jennie. In fact she is aggressive and angry towards them, and this manifests itself with her private destruction of the wallpaper.

  1. Identify what has driven the narrator to the brink of madness? How does she try to free herself from this element? What is her greatest desire? What is the central irony of the story?

She has an exceptional lack of mental and social stimuli, and she seems to be in a constant state of fear that she will be institutionalized by John. This explains why she appeases him and keeps him happy for as long as she can. John could have legally institutionalized his wife and she would never have seen her child again. In other words, she has to play along and agree with him for most of the story. Just like any prisoner, she does what little she can to recover a millimeter of power over a powerless situation. The irony is that her cure lies in her ability to write her way out of her P.P.D, but even that one creative act that feeds her soul is being monitored and censored. Thus, her greatest desires are to write and see her child. If you stop a creative person from engaging in their art form, you are metaphorically speaking—killing their spirt and soul.

  1. What is the central idea of this story?

I am not handing this one out. What do you think? What words would you have to use in that sentence, and remember you will probably need a semi-colon? If you examine the totality of my responses, you should be able to constru

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