Advanced English 11
“The Yellow Wallpaper”
~Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Introduction to Story Guide (Pre-Reading)
Part A-Victorian Era/Charlotte Perkins Gilman Class PowerPoint Notes
Victorian Era-
Charlotte Perkins Gilman-
The Forerunner-
Female Hysteria-
Symptoms-
Cures-
Part B-Rest Cure
Research the Rest Cure using the link and answer the following questions:
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/restcure.aspx
1. Who invented the cure?
2. When was it invented?
3. Why was it invented?
4. What was the rest cure?
5. According to the inventor, what were the benefits of the cure?
6. Who spoke out against the cure and why?
Part C-Textbook Notes: Use pages 594-596 to answer the following questions.
1. What was an important factor in the growth of the women’s movement?
2. Who was the first major American woman poet?
3. Why was she unknown--why did this poet chose to keep her anonymity at the time she was
writing?
4. On what do Kate Chopin’s writings focus?
5. Even though women gained the right to vote in 1920, what was a major weakness with the
reform?
6. What did the changes of the Roaring Twenties do the women’s movement?
7. Summarize the main idea of Sojourner Truth’s speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” on page 595-596?
Part D-Journal Response
Why might women's literature be a separate study of literature? What is unique about the feminine
experience in American culture? How is it different from the experience of men? Consider the
developments in historical, social, and gender perceptions that make women's voices worth studying.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper" (1913)
This article originally appeared in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner.
Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about
1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was
enough to drive anyone mad to read it.
Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had
ever seen, and--begging my pardon--had I been there?
Now the story of the story is this:
For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and
beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted
specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest
cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the
matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have
but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This
was in 1887.
I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental
ruin that I could see over.
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's
advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy
and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of
power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its
embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural
decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.
The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge,
saved one woman from a similar fate--so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she
recovered.
But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that
he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.
Part B-Reading Questions
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
1. What is the situation that the narrator finds herself in at the beginning of the story?
2. What is John’s attitude toward his wife, especially in terms of her illness? In the course of thinking about
this issue, consider the symbolism of the “nursery.”
3. Identify some of the ways in which the conflict between the narrator and her husband are established.
4. What are the narrator’s feelings toward her husband?
5. Do you think John is trying to drive his wife crazy?
6. Are there any clues that suggest that the woman in the story is not an entirely “reliable” narrator? Is there
any irony to this fact?
7. Consider the multiple functions that the wallpaper plays in the story. Also, does the wallpaper remain the
same throughout the story, or does it change?
8. What does the creeping figure in the wallpaper represent?
9. What is the principal social institution against which the narrator of the story struggles?
10. In what ways might the ending of the story be seen as both a victory and a defeat for the narrator? In what
ways is her situation both similar to and different from that of the woman in the wallpaper?
Famous Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes-agree or disagree-why?
“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society--more
briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”
“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver.”
“There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.”
“To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the
human mind.”
"It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that
whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed
and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it."
"The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain-- the hardest and most
iron-bound as well."
"A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband."
"When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the
simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one" (from
her suicide note).
Student Representations of the wallpaper
For those of you that haven't read "The Yellow Wallpaper" I will provide a brief synopsis that explains this
assignment. The author uses the wallpaper to indirectly characterize the mental state of the first-person
narrator. The story reads like a journal entry, and is indeed meant to be thought of as the secret journal of
the speaker. The speaker is suffering from a mental breakdown, which she projects onto the wallpaper in
the room in which she is being kept. As the story progresses, the images she describes become stranger
and demonstrate the progression of her illness.
The goal of this activity, is to have the students visualize what they are reading, as well as consider the
indirect implications of the wallpaper descriptions. I had the students read the short story silently to
themselves, and keep track of the descriptions of the wallpaper with a yellow highlighter. Anytime the
wallpaper was described, they were to record it on their yellow paper and then infer what this description
could be suggesting about the mental state of the narrator.
Here are some examples of student work:
Here are four different student examples of just their illustrations. It's interesting to look at how the
wallpaper was visualized by the individual students. Each illustration is so different, yet the words they
read that lead them to these drawing were all the same.
Here you can see a full list of the descriptions and the inferences the student made about the speaker's
mental health.
Reflections: I've taught this story twice now, and done the same assignment with four different sections
of 11th graders. It's difficult for me to explain this assignment, because I don't want to show a model of it,
because that would undermine the purpose. I want the students to be able to visualize the wallpaper on
their own, so we end up with so many individual interpretations. The issues I have with this assignment,
other than the lack of a model is getting students to add color to their drawings. A few students used the
highlighters I handed out for them to highlight the story to color their drawings. This happens in spite of
the fact that I hand out crayons, markers, and colored pencils. If I did this assignment again, I would
create a rubric that requires the use of color on the drawings.
Note: After the students were finished with their drawings, I hung them up on the wall, is if they were
wallpaper. It was interesting to see the student's responses to their classmate's interpretations of the
wallpaper.
Yellow Wallpaper Assessment
The Yellow Wallpaper
Constructed Response
Chose one of the following prompts below.
Take a position and support your idea with a minimum of three specific examples from the
short story.



Discuss how Gilman uses the imagery of the wallpaper to characterize the narrator to the reader.
How is the narrator’s deteriorating mental state evident through her description of the wallpaper?
Support the idea that the narrator is suffering from Post-Partum Depression. Use examples from
the text as well as your PPD handout to back up your claims.
Support the idea that the narrator is “insane” from the beginning of the story, and not affected by
her husband’s treatment of her, but rather a “lost cause.” You will want to consider the description
of the house, John’s behavior towards her, and her own behavior to support your stance.
Model Response
Prompt: Support the idea that this story has a feminist slant to it. Back your claims up with evidence in
the text.
The feminist slant in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is apparent from the opening and only builds in its message
as the story progresses. The narrator is never given a name, and the reader is left with a collection of the
demeaning pet-names her husband attributes to her such as “blessed little goose” and “little girl.” This sets
up the idea that her husband has no interest in viewing his wife as his equal, and this is the main conflict
of the story. If only her husband would take into account his wife’s own opinion about what would be best
for her well-being, her psychosis wouldn’t have manifested itself. The narrator is clearly projecting her
own entrapment in her submissive gender role onto the “women” behind the bars in the wallpaper. The
narrator probably views women as being trapped in the house, such as she is to the extreme. The only way
that the narrator can free herself is to break her metaphorical woman out of the wallpaper. She even tells
John and Jenny that “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so
you can’t put me back!” Gilman was writing about a problem that she saw with gender inequality, which
gives this story its feminist slant.
Student Response #1: Responding to Prompt 1.
The author uses imagery to show the narrator’s deteriorating mental state throughout the story. In the
beginning, when she first describes the paper, she speaks of the pattern, with its complicated twists and
turns. She says that the curves, “plunge off at outrageous angels, destroy themselves in unheard of
contradictions.” This is where her insanity begins, where she is just beginning to become confused.
Towards the middle she sees eyes as if she is being watched, and a “strange, provoking, formless sort of
figure” skulking in the background. Here she is becoming paranoid. The figure turns out to be a woman,
trapped within the paper. This shows the narrator’s struggle with being locked up alone in the room
along day long. Finally, at the end, the paper is completely shredded and torn off of the wall, showing
the total destruction of the narrator’s sanity.
Reflection: What I like about providing three prompts, is that it differentiates the assessment by ability
levels. The first prompt only requires that students pull three examples from their drawings and put them
in paragraph format. The second prompt requires that students take a look at the pamphlet that connects
Post-Partum Depression with the story. The class already discussed ways in which the speaker's symptoms
mimic those of PPD. If the students were paying attention during this discussion, they need only use the
examples brought up--but this is slightly more advanced than the first prompt. I "sold" the last prompt as
a challenge when describing the assignment. I knew that my more advanced students would "take the bait"
so to speak. Since students have to look closer at the text to back up these claims and go out on a bit more
of a limb than they would for the other prompts, this was the most advanced. Students did well with this
assignment, I used a rubric to grade it. This is how I formally assessed their understanding of this lesson.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
11th Grade Academic "The Yellow Wallpaper" Lesson Plan
(Student) Objectives: Students will be able to use textual evidence to back up a claim of how the narrator is
being indirectly characterized.
Topic of Lesson: Indirect Characterization
Rationale for Teaching: Understanding how an author indirectly characterizes their characters is a crucial skill for
comprehending literature.
Materials and Preparation: copy of Yellow Wallpaper story, blank sheet of yellow paper, coloring supplies,
Rest Cure handout, Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper handout, PPD handout, blank sheet of notebook paper,
laptop and Smartboard, YouTube clip, PowerPoint, writing rubrics
Focus/Motivation Activity:
I will read statements addressing common gender stereotypes. Around the room I will have marked “Agree” or
“Disagree.” As I read the statements, students will move to either “agree” or “disagree” then explain their
choice.
Procedures:
1. Mini-lecture on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life using PowerPoint.
2. The class will read the Rest-Cure Brochure together
3. Mini-lecture on indirect characterization and explanation of activity
4. Students read Yellow Wallpaper independently, highlighting in yellow anytime the narrator discusses the
wallpaper, and recording it on their yellow sheets. Students may collect coloring supplies to complete
their project as they progress through the story.
5. Once students get to section D in the story, the class will pause reading. We will read through the PostPartum Depression handout and have a class discussion of its implications on the story.
6. Students will continue to read until the end of the story. I will then read the last section again, acting
out the end scenes and fielding questions about the action of the story.
7. The class will watch a YouTube trailer for the “Yellow Wallpaper” film
8. We will read over Gilman’s Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper letter and discuss it.
9. I will explain the three different prompts that students will be responding to. I will read over my model
prompt so the expectation is clear.
Closure Activity: Students will complete a constructed response to a prompt of their choice
Evaluation of Students: Students will be graded on their ability to address the prompts. I will use a rubric to grade their
responses.
Article at the following link: http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper" (1913)
This article originally appeared in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner.
Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about
1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was
enough to drive anyone mad to read it.
Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had
ever seen, and--begging my pardon--had I been there?
Now the story of the story is this:
For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and
beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted
specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest
cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the
matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have
but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This
was in 1887.
I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental
ruin that I could see over.
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's
advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy
and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of
power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its
embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural
decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.
The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge,
saved one woman from a similar fate--so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she
recovered.
But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that
he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.
Gilman Official Site: http://www.charlotteperkinsgilman.com/2008/04/ii-fiction-withpurpose.html
Charlotte Perkins Gillman (1860-1935)
Contributing Editor: Elaine Hedges
Classroom Issues and Strategies
Students respond well to "The Yellow Wall-Paper." They like the story and don't have serious difficulty
understanding it, and they enjoy discussing the meanings of the wallpaper. They may, however,
oversimplify the story, reading the ending either as the heroine's victory over her circumstances, or her
defeat. Have students choose and defend one or the other of these positions for a classroom debate (with
the aim of showing that there is no easy resolution). Students might also want to debate (attack or
defend) the role of the husband in the story.
Background information on medical treatment of women, and specifically white, middle-class women,
in the nineteenth century, especially Dr. S. Weir Mitchell's "rest cure" (mentioned in the headnote) is
useful.
Naive students sometimes wonder why the woman in the story can't just leave; they need to understand
the situation of white, middle-class married women in the nineteenth century: The censure against
divorce, and their limited opportunities in the paid labor force.
"Turned," like "The Yellow Wall-Paper," deals with the situation of women inside marriage, but it offers
a wife who takes matters into her own hands and recreates her life. The two stories can thus be
profitably compared and contrasted. Significant differences, of course, include the greater freedom (she
is childless) and professional training (she can support herself) of the wife, Mrs. Marroner, in "Turned."
Gilman, in her major sociological work, Women and Economics, argued that only economic
independence would release women from their subordination within marriage, and Mrs. Marroner is an
example of this thesis. One might note the changes in her attitude toward Gerta, from a class-biased one
to one of female bonding. "Turned" is also noteworthy as a frank treatment of an issue--an employer's
sexual abuse of a female domestic--that wasn't openly discussed in fiction at the time.
Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues
Consider both stories as critiques of male power, including sexual power, and of marriage. Students can
be asked how relevant these critiques are today: whether similar or comparable situations still exist.
Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions
In "The Yellow Wall-Paper," less sophisticated students may identify the narrator with Gilman, since the
story is based on an episode in her life. Discussion of the literary convention of the first-person point of
view and of differences between an author and her persona are useful. The dramatic immediacy of the
first-person point of view (versus the use of the third person in "Turned") can be demonstrated.
Although Gilman's intention in both stories was didactic (she wrote "The Yellow Wall-Paper," she said,
to warn readers against Dr. Mitchell's treatment), discussions of form and style can suggest how a text
can transcend its author's intention or any narrow didactic purpose. In what ways is "Turned" more
clearly didactic than "The Yellow Wall-Paper"?
"The Yellow Wall-Paper" is, of course, highly appropriate for a discussion of symbolism: how it
emerges and operates within a text. Students enjoy discussing the symbolism of the wallpaper and of the
room to which the narrator is confined.
Original Audience
I discuss Gilman's difficulty in getting "The Yellow Wall-Paper" published, and ask students to consider
why it might have disturbed her contemporaries. (It was rejected by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly on
the grounds that it would make readers too miserable.) Gilman received letters of praise for the story
from readers who read it as an accurate clinical description of incipient madness. In 1899 a few
reviewers read it as a critique of marriage and of medical treatment of women.
Readers in Gilman's time would have been familiar with Poe's stories. Might "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
have been perceived as similar to a Poe story? In what significant ways is it different from Poe's stories?
"Turned" is one of about two hundred short stories Gilman wrote and published in her magazine, The
Forerunner. They were intended to dramatize the ideas she expounded in her nonfiction about women's
roles and status in society, and to suggest reforms. The Forerunner never had a circulation of more than
a thousand copies. Today, however, more and more of these stories by Gilman are being reprinted. For
others, see Barbara H. Solomon, editor, HERLAND and Selected Short Stories of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Penguin USA, 1992, and Robert Shulman, ed., "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Other Stories,
Oxford, 1995.
Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections
In the same section of the anthology, other texts dealing with marriage and with male-female power
relations include: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's, some of Kate Chopin's, and Mary Wilkins Freeman's. One
could also contrast the Gilman pieces with the comic/satiric treatment of husband-wife relations in
Marietta Holley.
Two of Emily Dickinson's poems provide useful contexts for "The Yellow Wall-Paper": "Much madness
is divinest sense" and "She rose to his requirement."
Bibliography
Elaine Hedges, "Afterword," The Yellow Wall-Paper, Feminist Press, 1973, has an analysis of the story
and a brief biography of Gilman.
Catherine Golden, ed., The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper," Feminist
Press, 1991, reprints a good selection of both nineteenth-century materials relevant to the story and
contemporary critical treatments of it.
Ann Lane, ed., The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, Pantheon, 1980, includes a selection of Gilman's
stories and excerpts from her longer fictions, including the utopia, Herland. See also Denise D. Knight,
ed. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Selected Stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, University of Delaware
Press, 1994.
Name: ___________________________________
Date/Class period: _______________/___________________
Reading Questions for “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
1.
Early in the story, the narrator says “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.”
(first page) What comment does this make about the role of women in marriage? What gender
assumption does it establish/reinforce? Over time, how could it make the narrator or any person feel?
2. The narrator says, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me
good. But what is one to do?” (p. 648) as well as “I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time…I
determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a
conclusion…The effort is getting to be greater than the relief…It is getting to be a great effort for me to
think straight.” (pp. 650-651) What feelings does the narrator describe? Where might these feelings lead
to if left unchecked?
3. “It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for the windows are barred for
little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” (p. 648) What inferences can you make about
the narrator’s status from the described setting and imagery say? How does it generalize the gender
assumptions about women in the late nineteenth century?
4. The narrator describes her feelings about the wallpaper as “repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering
unclean yellow…It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (p. 649) and
“I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways
they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.” (pp. 649-650) What atmosphere does
the wallpaper create? What is the wallpaper beginning to symbolize and what effect is it beginning to
have on her mental health? What mental condition is she beginning to manifest?
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Name: ___________________________________
Date/Class period: _______________/___________________
5. The narrator describes the figure behind the wallpaper as a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure”
(p. 650); “The faint figure behind seems to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.” (p. 652)
What could the figure represent and why is “behind” the appropriate word? What does the pattern
symbolize? What gender assumption do these symbols underscore?
6. “’Better in body perhaps—‘ I began, and stopped short, for he [John] sat up straight and looked at me
with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.” (p. 652) What seems to be John’s
attitude about the narrator’s condition? How does this mirror society’s attitude—both past and present—
regarding mental health conditions?
7. Why must the woman in the wallpaper “creep” by daylight, and why must it be “humiliating” (p. 654)
for her to do so? What could the daylight symbolize? How does her feeling of humiliation contradict
the assumptions about women at the time?
8. How does the story end? What inferences can you make about Gilman’s perspective on gender
assumptions and their ultimate effects?
Primary Source Reading Questions
In Wear and Tear, or Hints of Overworked:

What does Mitchell define “future womanly usefulness” (p.33) to be? How is this
perspective/assumption reflected and depicted in Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”

Mitchell notes “…the experience and opinions of those of us who are called upon to see how many
school girls are suffering in health from confinement, want of exercise at the time of the day when they
most incline to it, bad ventilation,* and too steady occupation of mind.” (p. 39-40) How might gender
assumptions affect medical experts’ diagnoses of the cause and effect of an illness?
In Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them, Chapter IV Rest:

Mitchell makes the point that, generally, exercise benefits most patients. Why might it lead to “increase
of trouble, to extreme sense of fatigue, to nausea” (p. 38) in women? What gender assumption does this
perpetuate?

What reason does Mitchell propose for women doctors’ failure to treat other women with nervous
illnesses? What fundamental gender assumptions support his reasoning?
In American Nervousness:

What specific improvement/attribute does Beard comment on repeatedly in regards to women? How
does this emphasize a common assumption about women in the late nineteenth century? How does
Gilman use “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in criticizing the effects of such an assumption?

Why was Beard so “surprised” after reading the essays produced by the member of the Women’s
Congress in “Recent Improvement in the American Physique” in American Nervousness? How are these
women similar or different from Gilman’s narrator?
In “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”:

How does Gilman describe Dr. Mitchell and her experience of his rest cure? Which characters in the
short story embody her perspectives/experiences with a medical professional in real life?

What does Gilman identify as the factors that help her recover from her “utter mental ruin”? What
elements would you add to the short story for a different ending that is similar to Gilman’s life and
experience? Would the story be as powerful? Why or why not?
Questions for All Teams:

What were the words that Mitchell and Beard used to describe women? What gender assumptions are
implied in those words?

How might the gender assumptions held by these men of medical knowledge and social standing
perpetuate social norms, and affect their viewing an epidemic of nervous disease among women?

How did the ideas about women’s role in society affect their experiences of illness, and how they were
treated by the medical profession?
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/literatureofprescription/education/c2HighSchoolEnglish.html#voc
abulary