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Study Guide Questions
1. What is the situation that the narrator finds herself in at the beginning of the story?
2. What is
ially in terms of her illness? In the course of thinking about
3. Identify some of the ways in which the conflict between the narrator and her husband are established.
4. What are the narrato
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
any irony to this fact? Do you trust all her statements and conclusions? Why?
Is there
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. Is the narrator emotionally unbalanced? Chart the deterioration of her condition. Why is she obsesses with
finding a pattern in the wallpaper?
9. What does the creeping figure in the wallpaper represent?
10. What is the principal social institution against which the narrator of the story struggles?
11. 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?
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Literary Criticism
Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Choose&two&of&the&
three&theories&and&analyze&the&story&by&answering&the&following&questions&twice,&using&a&different&
psychological&theory&each&time&from&which&to&construct&your&responses.&&&
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1. Explain&the&distant&relationship&between&John&and&his&wife.&
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Psychoanalyzing-Literature&
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Sigmund Freud
(1856 - 1939)
While there is a sense that we must become familiar with Freud and psychoanalysis, we must also become
unfamiliar with his terms because they have permeated our language and our world view so completely that we
are not aware of his influence on our thinking.
repression, the Oedipus Complex, memory, sexuality, and dream analysis are some of the expounded and
accepted concepts still used today to understand the human mind. Some of the criticism of his work (of which
there is much) is; while Freud claims to be scientific, his theories came out of his study of a few patients who
history and the Bible. To learn about Freud, let us look at him through his terminology. We must remember that
The Oedipus Complex
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Dream Analysis
It was through dream analysis that Freud discovered the Oedipus Complex. He believed that the dream
expressed what the conscious state was afraid to express. By looking at a dream one could look at the
unconscious. What is unconsciously going on in this passage?
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Jacques Lacan
(1901-1981)
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst. After receiving a medical degree, he became a psychoanalyst in
Paris. Lacan is infamous for his unusual methods of treatment, such as the fifteen minute therapy session. Like
Freud, Lacan gives us much terminology with which to understand his theories. Some of these terms are: the
phallus, the Lack, the Real, the Symbolic, Imaginary and the Mirror Stage. Many of these terms have complex
meanings, and to provide a definition is a somewhat onerous task that does not successfully flesh out their full
implications.
The Symbolic
The Symbolic is that realm in which the subject has language; it is the realm in which the mirror stage is
retrospectively known. The Symbolic realm is the realm of language and culture. The child is ushered into the
Symbolic realm with the resolution of its Oedipus Complex.
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Psychological versus Physiological
a physiological, ailment. Although this transition helped the new green fields of psychology and psychiatry to
blossom and brought attention to the work of Sigmund Freud, it did not change the gendered nature of the
disease nor did it change the social status of women (Bauer, 131-132). It may be that the failure of such a
dramatic change in thought to recognize exactly what was causing depression in women was even more
frustrating to Gilman than was the original assumption that melancholic depression was a physical disease
caused by the weak and inferior bodies of women.
what are the psychological ailments versus the actual physiological
ailments and vice versa.
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