Preparing to Research “The Yellow Wallpaper”

1. Preparing to Research “The Yellow Wallpaper”

2. Some Things to Consider… • Social influences of time period (Victorian Era) • Political influences on author / time period • Cultural influences (gothic literature) • Economic influences on author / time period • Personal life events (biographical information about the author herself)

3. The Text • “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine) • Feminist • Gothic • Victorian

4. The Author • Charlotte Perkins Gilman was best known in her time as a crusading journalist and feminist intellectual, a follower of such pioneering women’s rights advocates as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilman’s great-aunt. • Gilman was concerned with political inequality and social justice in general, but the primary focus of her writing was the unequal status of women within the institution of marriage. • In such works as Concerning Children (1900), The Home (1904), and Human Work (1904), Gilman argued that women’s obligation to remain in the domestic sphere robbed them of the expression of their full powers of creativity and intelligence, while simultaneously robbing society of women whose abilities suited them for professional and public life. • An essential part of her analysis was that the traditional power structure of the family made no one happy—not the woman who was made into an unpaid servant, not the husband who was made into a master, and not the children who were subject to both.

5. Gilman’s Life Continued… • In 1886, early in her first marriage and not long after the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (as she was then known) was stricken with a severe case of depression. • She was referred to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, then the country’s leading specialist in nervous disorders, whose treatment in such cases was a “rest cure” of forced inactivity. Especially in the case of his female patients, Mitchell believed that depression was brought on by too much mental activity and not enough attention to domestic affairs. For Gilman, this course of treatment was a disaster. Prevented from working, she soon had a nervous breakdown. • Once she abandoned Mitchell’s rest cure, Gilman’s condition improved, though she claimed to feel the effects of the ordeal for the rest of her life. Leaving behind her husband and child, a scandalous decision, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (she took the name Gilman after a second marriage, to her cousin) embarked on a successful career as a journalist, lecturer, and publisher. • She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” soon after her move to California, and in it she uses her personal experience to create a tale that is both a chilling description of one woman’s fall into madness and a potent symbolic narrative of the fate of creative women stifled by a paternalistic culture.

6. Victorian England • Queen Victoria reigned from1837-1901 • The population of England almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901 • Only Ireland's population decreased rapidly, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to the Great Famine. • Around 15 million emigrants left the United Kingdom in the Victorian era and settled mostly in the United States, Canada, and Australia. • Industrial revolution (ended in 1850) • Increasing fertility rates • Agricultural Revolution (led to decreased mortality rates)

7. Feminism A Definition: a belief in need to secure rights and opportunities for women equal to those of men or a commitment in securing these; a belief in a movement committed to securing and defending rights and opportunities for women that are equal to those of men.

8. Spheres • Pubic sphere • Private sphere

9. Causes of Initiation? • Industrial revolution • Rise of middle class • Women having to support themselves “Odd Women” • The case of the bicycle • STIs and Promiscuity

10. Also, we should consider the “anti-feminist” • Eliza Lynn Linton “The Girl of the Period”

12. From “The Girl of the Period” Time was when the phrase, "a fair young English girl," meant the ideal of womanhood; to us, at least, of home birth and breeding. It meant a creature generous, capable, modest; something franker than a Frenchwoman, more to be trusted than an Italian, as brave as an American but more refined, as domestic as a German and more graceful. It meant a girl who could be trusted alone if need be, because of the innate purity and dignity of her nature, but who was neither bold in bearing nor masculine in mind; a girl who, when she married, would be her husband's friend and companion, but never his rival; one who would consider his interests as identical with her own, and not hold him as just so much fair game for spoil; who would make his house his true home and place of rest, not a mere passage-place for vanity and ostentation to pass through; a tender mother, an industrious housekeeper, a judicious mistress.

13. The “Girl of the Period” Continued… The Girl of the Period is a creature who dyes her hair and paints her face as the first articles of her personal religion — a creature whose sole idea of life is fun; whose sole aim is unbounded luxury; and whose dress is the chief object of such thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavour is to outvie her neighbours in the extravagance of fashion. No matter if, in the time of crinolines, she sacrifices decency; in the time of trains, cleanliness; in the time of tied-back skirts, modesty; no matter either, if she makes herself a nuisance and an inconvenience to every one she meets; — the Girl of the Period has done away with such moral muffishness >> note 1 as consideration for others or regard for counsel and rebuke. It was all very well in old-fashioned times, when fathers and mothers had some authority and were treated with respect, to be tutored and made to obey, but she is far too fast and flourishing to be stopped in mid-career by these slow old morals; and as she lives to please herself, she does not care if she displeases every one else.

14. Why would a woman be anti-feminist?

15. Feminist Authors • Virginia Woolf • Olive Schreiner • Thomas Hardy • George Gissing Can you think of any modern feminist writers or texts? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWpsOqh8q0M&ob=av3e

16. Gothic Literature: A Definition • a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. • Usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other “dark” subjects. • Gothic literature was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such “gothic” surroundings. These stories of darkness may occur in more everyday settings, such as the quaint house where a man goes mad. • In essence, these stories are romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of view. • This literature gave birth to many other forms, such as suspense, ghost stories, horror, and mystery. Gothic literature is similar in form compared to other genres, it differs in terms of content and its focus on the "weird" aspects of life.

18. Characteristics of Gothic • a castle, ruined or intact, haunted or not, • ruined buildings which are sinister or which arouse a pleasing melancholy, • dungeons, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern houses, become spooky basements or attics, • labyrinths, dark corridors, and winding stairs, • shadows, a beam of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering candle, or the only source of light failing (a candle blown out or an electric failure), • extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, thick forests, or icy wastes, and extreme weather, • omens and ancestral curses, • magic, supernatural manifestations, or the suggestion of the supernatural, • a passion-driven, willful villain-hero or villain, • a curious heroine with a tendency to faint and a need to be rescued–frequently, • a hero whose true identity is revealed by the end of the novel, • horrifying (or terrifying) events or the threat of such happenings.

19. Some examples of Gothic Literature • “Tell Tale Heart” by Edger Allen Poe • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte • Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson • Dracula by Bram Stoker Can you think of any modern examples?