ENGCW 272 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: The Yellow Wallpaper
19 Jun 2018
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❏Story Notes
❏Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper
❏Background on Gilman:
❏Known for her feminist writings
❏This story doesn’t really seem to fit the trend, but does??
❏Nonetheless, it’s considered a horror story, and a very creepy one at that
❏
Summary:
❏Basically a woman and her husband move into a new home (I believe near a
countryside)
❏The woman is ill (if I remember correctly, she gave birth recently, or at least she
has a child with her husband who is young)
❏The husband thought this house would be the best for her recovery
❏The husband is a doctor
❏The woman and her husband’s room is covered in this bizarre wallpaper that
makes the woman anxious, but her husband does not allow her to sleep in
another room
❏Over time, the woman becomes more and more paranoid and her condition
seems to worsen. The husband’s sister (I believe) stays in the house with her
while the husband is at work to tend to their child. The woman does not trust his
sister, and eventually even her husband, as he tells her she’s getting better while
she knows she’s getting worse
❏The story ends shockingly.
❏The woman seems to become “one” with the wallpaper and she ends in a
seeming nervous fit, and the husband faints.
❏My response to the story:
❏ Honestly, at first glance I was not aware of the fact that the story was structured
like a diary entry (until I remembered this prompt, haha.) And honestly, once I did
realize it, I didn't much care for it. Before I got to the ending I sort of treated the
story as an unnerving Sylvia Plath-like narrative of a woman who is ill, mentally. I
feel like she's depressed, and she has nervous fits. Needless to say, when I got
to the end of the story, I was completely confused, and a little shocked. I had to
read the whole story over again to understand it.
That said, I feel like the diary format of the story contributes to the effectiveness of
the story by helping to build up to the climax, arguably the ending. We sort of follow this
woman's diary entries as they become more and more eery as she becomes more and
more affected by her "nervous condition", and it just culminates into an ending that
sparks like a delayed firework across the page. Honestly, I feel like the story wouldn't be
the same without it. The foreshadowing and build-up are just perfectly contained by it.
Document Summary
Nonetheless, it"s considered a horror story, and a very creepy one at that. Basically a woman and her husband move into a new home (i believe near a countryside) The woman is ill (if i remember correctly, she gave birth recently, or at least she has a child with her husband who is young) The husband thought this house would be the best for her recovery. The woman and her husband"s room is covered in this bizarre wallpaper that makes the woman anxious, but her husband does not allow her to sleep in another room. Over time, the woman becomes more and more paranoid and her condition seems to worsen. The husband"s sister (i believe) stays in the house with her while the husband is at work to tend to their child. The woman does not trust his sister, and eventually even her husband, as he tells her she"s getting better while she knows she"s getting worse.
