The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Mental illnessWhat is insanity / mental illness?Insanity = A derangement of the mind.

Mental illness = Various disorders in which a person's thoughts, emotions, or behaviour are so abnormal as to cause suffering to himself, herself, or other people

What are the stereotypes surrounding this issue?

Which films / books / plays refer to mental illness; or give a description of someone with a mental illness.

Weir Mitchell CureSummarise the article in 5 bullet points.

Read through Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s account of why she wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and discuss ‘her’ reaction to the cure.

Structuralism

Structuralist criticism is not particularly concerned with context, content or ‘meaning’ of a literary work so much as the way it is put together. It recognises that writers present ‘constructions’ of the world in the way they organise their ideas. They find interest in the way the language and form of a particular work might depend on such things as important oppositions or contrasts, for instance, or key motifs around which a work may create patterns.

Extract one…

John Narrator

Read extract – in pairs students complete the table below focusing on binary oppositions.

Psychoanalysis What was this cure?Psychoanalytic critics are concerned with the way literature reflects the mind. Since the time of Sigmund Freud, the last 100 years have witnessed enormous development of interest in the way aspects of human behaviour are either completely or in part repressed by social, cultural and ethical values. The characters / relationships of literary texts are often reflective of the complexity of human psychology.

This criticism centres on internal and external conflicts between and within characters. They search for what is repressed or hidden in the text (emotional conflict).

Task

• In pairs, analyse the description of the house and garden – what does this reveal about the situation and mind of the narrator?

• What inner conflicts are presented?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3IdbpmV2ho