In “The Yellow Wallpaper” discuss the problems that arise for you, the reader, due to the apparent unreliability of the narrator. Can the reader decipher any truth out of her tale?
“The Yellow Wallpaper” – Gilman completed the story in 1890 after the breakup of her first marriage. Based on her experience with depression and the debilitating effects of her medical treatment for the condition, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written, she later claimed, to “save people from being driven crazy.” The story arguably demands a feminist approach. The narrator is not only physically imprisoned in her comfortable, airy room; she is spiritually and intellectually confined in a patronizing male world that reduces her to childish dependency. Watch how form follows function here. Forbidden to write by her concerned but incredibly patronizing husband, she secretly jots down her thoughts and experiences. Her prose is anxious and disconnected. Not only is the narrator unreliable, her reports are complicated further by the untrustworthy behavior of her husband and his sister, who take care of her. With good but misguided intentions, they talk down to her, and much of what they say appears to be deliberately misleading. The main irony of the story is that the further the narrator sinks into madness the more clearly she understands the hypocrisy and paternalism of her keepers. Nothing anyone says in the story can be accepted uncritically.“The Story of an Hour” – Should this work also be read with a feminist approach? Chopin again (e.g. “The Storm) presents her characters and situations without judging or moralizing. Instead, she dramatizes situations in which basically decent people find themselves in honest conflict between duty and desire, between one kind of love and another, situations in which they have strong and sincere feelings on both sides of the issue.Journal #5
1)In “The Yellow Wallpaper” discuss the problems that arise for you, the reader, due to the apparent unreliability of the narrator. Can the reader decipher any truth out of her tale?
2)Analyze the husband’s attitude and behavior towards his wife. Do you find him reprehensible? A product of his time and society? Does he ultimately contribute to his wife’s insanity?
3)In “The Story of an Hour” is Mrs. Mallard’s sorrow at the news of her husband’s death merely feigned? Try to account for her sudden changes of feeling.
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