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Lecture 14

ENGLISH 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: The Yellow Wallpaper, Dramatic Monologue, Sigmund Freud

School
McMaster University
Department
English
Course Code
ENGLISH 1A03
Professor
Jeffery Donaldson
Lecture
14
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November 2, 2017
What is it about?
●A girl in therapy who’s trying to cope with a death in her family
●QUESTION ARISES: Who died? (Her mother)
●The trauma that’s hidden behind, and the dexterity she puts up as a front with ‘just pretending’
●The ironic thing is that the possibility is what the narrator thinks is not going to happen at all
○The therapist is in control of the tensions, which are productive, and he does this by
asking questions
○Dr. Semenchuk, has a strange personality, with underlying sexual things, he is
incompetent, however he is a vehicle of who the narrator explains the story, in which she
knows the truth, but she processes it through him
○He is an antagonist to the narrator; Hannah (beginning of the story, what his name was
going to be?) [11-89]
○The narrator is not in control, because she seems insecure, and she is trying to portray a
strong side of her, however she is just a teenager and she is going through a lot of
emotions, she is stubborn
●The Nirvana Principle has to do with a psychological aspect determined by Sigmund Freud
○The Nirvana Principle: the psyche's characteristic tendency to reduce inner tensions and
approach an inorganic state as if responding to the death instinct.
Connection between:
- The Nirvana Principle
- The Story of an Hour
- The Yellow Wallpaper
●All intertwine with the feminist perspective, and a strong female role, that have some conflict
they are dealing with, and overcoming
●How they cope with the social architecture of the dominant male’s world of society
●Specific setting: takes place in a room, and the story revolves arounds it
Analysis: First Paragraph
●“For the record, his real name’s Dr. Semenchuk” (89).
●When she has to prove herself, or that she has to prove how closely related the therapist is
to the nicknames she comes up with (a pig).
●She’s putting up a front, again she is just pretending, of how he is playing shrink, even
though he is a therapist trying to help, however, she doesn’t trust him, because she is so
stubborn
●There is a silent listener (kind of like a dramatic monologue) aligning the reader with purposes
Possible Approaches:
●Storytelling as therapy
●Self-revelation
●Identity
●Narrative structure
●Aboriginal contexts
●The doppelgänger motif
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