Class Debate Topics
How responsible is John?
Argument 1 =
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story that allows us to view male doctors as misguided.
Use the details from the story to argue that the narrator's husband is controlling and insensitive, purposing confining his wife in order to force her to be dependent on him.
Argument 2 =
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story that presents two people who are both trapped in their gender roles. The narrator is a wife who is frustrated because she can't communicate what she really things and wants. Her husband, John, is a well-known doctor who isn't quite sure how to help her. Use the story to support this interpretation and give both the narrator and her husband the benefit of the doubt.
Is the Narrator Triumphant or is she Defeated?
Argument 3 =
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about a woman who is confined and silenced. In the end, she is defeated as she finally gives in to madness and is found creeping along the floor of the room. Use the story to support that interpretation that she became completely dependent on her husband and was reduced to an infantile state.
Argument 4 =
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about a woman, who though she is confined and silenced, triumphs. In the end, she achieves a greater sense of self as she acts out her madness. Use details from the story to argue that when the narrator creeps along the floor of the room, causes her husband to faint, and crawls over his body, she overcomes both her confinement and her silencing. She triumphs over her husband and male-dominated society.
@SH:Instructor's Resources
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 5th ed. NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1988. Annotation: A dictionary of literary terms is helpful for defining gothic, realism, and voice. This one had a better definition for gothic than Baldick's dictionary, listed below.
Ashby, Ruth and Deborah Gore Ohrn, eds. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman," Herstory: Women Who Changed the World. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1995. Annotation: Herstory is an anthology of essays about women
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reformers, writers and scientists of all ages and from various time periods.
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Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. NY: Oxford University Press, 1990. Annotation: A dictionary of literary terms is helpful for defining gothic, realism, and voice.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Editions Limited, Inc., 1992. Annotation: The novel is classic gothic story of a young governess who falls in love with her employer. Comparisons can be drawn between the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and the character of Bertha in Jane Eyre. Not the most popular version, this one is available through Barnes and Noble for $3.00.
Cahill, Susan, ed. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman." Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth Century American
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Women Writers. NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. Annotation: The anthology includes autobiographical sketches of American women authors. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's excerpt is from her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
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De Simone, Deborah M. (1995). "Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminization of Education." WILLA: Women in Literature and Life. Volume IV, 13-17. NY:
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Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English, 1998. Annotation:
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This essay can also be found online. There is a link to it from the Charlotte Perkins Gilman website available through Yahoo!. De Simone discusses the life and literature of Charlotte Perkins Gilman within the context that Gilman wrote, " . . . in order to transform society by educating other women." The essay mostly discusses "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Herland.
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Gaslight. Screenplay by Patrick Hamilton. Dir. George Cukor. Perf. Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotton. MGM, 1944. Annotation: The film is a great psycho-thriller that can be a companion to "The Yellow Wallpaper." An assignment using the film is provided relating the film to the story's theme of madness.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Annotation: Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's essays analyze the theme of the madwoman in the attic, referring to Bertha's character in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. While the entire book is well worth reading, the essay "Toward a Feminist Poetics" offers a detailed discussion of Gilman's story. As a whole, the essay examines the patriarchal standards that confine women.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Catherine Golden, ed. The
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Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper", NY: Feminist Press, 1991. Annotation: Gilman's short story of a woman's descent into madness once her husband confines her to an old nursury and prevents her from writing. This edition was used to cite page numbers throughout the unit.
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Golden, Catherine, ed. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper". NY: Feminist Press, 1991. Annotation: This book is easily the most comprehensive resource I found. After failing to locate this book in several public libraries, I finally purchased it through amazon.com. The book
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includes "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman's essay "'Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper'," and excerpts from Gilman's autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In addition, the book provides essays on medicine in the nineteenth century, essays by and about Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and
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essays about American womanhood. The critical sections of the books
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include essays on feminist literary analysis, comparisons of Gilman to Edgar Allan Poe, essays on analyzing the story as realism, and essays on writing.
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Moers, Ellen. Literary Women: The Great Writers. NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1976. Annotation: Literary Women examines the lives and work of women writers. Moers refers to Gilman's story only sparingly. The most useful portion of her analysis of women's literature is her discussion of genre, specifically the female gothic.
Solomon, Barbara, ed. HERLAND and Selected Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1992. Annotation: Herland is Gilman's novel about a feminist utopian community. The book also includes eighteen other short stories by Gilman, including "The Yellow Wallpaper."