brekreuz's Journal

study guide
sorry this took so long to post...welp, here's my study guide. enjoy!

Bre Kreuz’s Study Guide: “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Background Check:
• Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut
• She was the great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Was a prominent social activist and leading theorist of the women's movement at the turn of the twentieth century
• Examined the role of women in society and put forth her social theories in Women and Economics and other nonfiction books, while she developed her feminist ideals in her novels and short stories
• When she had her daughter in 1885, Gilman developed neurasthenia, an emotional disorder characterized by fatigue and depression and often causes great anxiety and nervousness
• Her physician, Silas Weir Mitchell, told her all she needed to get better was the “rest cure,” which led her to write “The Yellow Wallpaper”
• She self-published the feminist magazine The Forerunner
• In 1932, she learned she had incurable breast cancer, and killed herself with an overdose of chloroform on August 17, 1935

“The Yellow Wallpaper”
Characters:
• Wife – she is the narrator, although we never know what her name is for sure (some people believe her name is Jane though, because there is a reference at the end of the story)
• John – husband; caretaker of his wife; very practical; a physician; “man of the house” but treats his wife as if she were a child
• Mary – the nanny; she takes care of the narrator’s and John’s baby, while the wife is “ill”
• Jennie – John’s sister who stays with them for a little while and plays the role of housekeeper while the wife is getting better

Summary
Basically, the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a woman, whose name is anonymous throughout the story, although some people believe it is Jane. This woman and her husband, John, rent a mansion for the summer, so she can recuperate from neurasthenia. Since John is a very practical man, as well as a physician, he thinks the “rest cure” is the best way to go (just as her real doctor, Silas Weir Mitchell had told her to do). She stays and rests in a former nursery room and is forbidden from working or writing, although she sneaks and writes in her journal. This specific room is very spacious, sunlit during the day, and has yellow wallpaper (although it is stripped off in a few places), with an ugly and chaotic pattern. About two weeks into staying at the mansion, the narrator's condition gets worse. Jennie, John’s sister, comes to take care of the house, while Mary, the nanny, takes care of their baby. The wife becomes annoyed with the wallpaper, because it looks like a figure is stuck in the pattern, and she just cannot figure it out.
The narrator continues to study the wallpaper, but becomes more and more anxious and depressed. She literally becomes obsessed with trying to uncover its confusing patterns. She swears she sees an image of a woman stooping down and "creeping" around, and her figure gets clearer every day. She never tells John about the wallpaper, but when she asks to leave the house, John says no. At nighttime, as the moon shines in her room, the narrator can see very clearly a woman behind bars. She gets even more nervous and paranoid now, because she believes that John and Jennie know and are interested in the wallpaper, too.
The narrator's condition actually improves as she becomes more and more interested in the wallpaper. She believes that there is a “yellow smell” coming from the wallpaper that has spread all over the house. At night, the narrator sees the woman in the wallpaper shake the bars in the pattern, as she tries to break through them. She also notices that the pattern has strangled the heads of many women who have tried to break through the bars. During the day, in the sunlight, she believes she has seen the woman crawling around outside. As of right now, she is leaving the house in two days, and becomes determined to peel off the wallpaper before she leaves.
At night, the narrator tries to help the woman behind bars escape by peeling off the wallpaper around the room. The next day, Jennie sees what the narrator has done, but is not too shocked, because the wallpaper was so ugly. The next night, the narrator locks herself in her room, and continues stripping the wallpaper. She hears shrieks and screams within the wallpaper as she tears it off. She contemplates jumping out of a window, but the bars in the nursery prevent her from doing that. She begins to creep and crawl around the room, just as the woman in the wallpaper had been doing. When John finally gets into the room, the narrator tells him she has peeled off most of the wallpaper, and now no one can put her “back inside.” John ends up fainting, and the narrator continues creeping and crawling around the room over him.

“Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner…..
• Many people want to know why she wrote such a disturbing story
• When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine in 1891, a Boston physician made a protest in The Transcript, saying that a story like this “ought not be written,” because it was enough to drive anybody who read it insane
• Gilman states that for many years, she suffered from severe and nervous breakdowns, and went to the best doctor in the country for help in 1887
• This doctor prescribed the “rest cure,” which she obeyed for about three months
• She almost went mentally insane, but with help from another specialist and friend, began working and living life again
• Gilman got out into normal activity and she recovered!
• She wrote this story and sent it to the doctor who told her to “rest,” but he never responded
• Years later, Gilman found out that this great specialist had admitted to his friends that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia after reading The Yellow Wallpaper

GiLmAn: “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.”

Interesting Statement about “The Yellow Wallpaper” from Gale Resources:
~ **“The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is considered Gilman's best work of fiction and is also her least typical. Rather than an optimistic vision of what women can achieve, the story is a first-person account of a young mother's mental deterioration, based on Gilman's own experiences. Although early reviewers interpreted The Yellow Wallpaper as either a horror story or a case study in mental illness, most critics today see it as a feminist indictment of society's subjugation of women and praise its compelling characterization, complex symbolism, and thematic depth.”**~

Good Gilman quote for the ladies:

….."Women are human beings as much as men, by nature; and as women, are even more sympathetic with human processes. To develop human life in its true powers we need fully equal citizenship for women”…..