...provided by SULTAN QABOOS UNIVERSITY (29 Dec 2014 03:14 GMT) The Pedagogical Possibilities of Covering Gilman’s Wallpaper Karla J. Murphy In his introduction to The Pedagogical Wallpaper, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock notes how the pedagogical diversity of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” prompted him to collect essays for this book. He goes on to explain that “given the ubiquity of the text within various academic settings, I was also struck by the absence of attention to the text within pedagogical contexts. Despite the large (and steadily growing) body of criticism to the story, very little of it explicitly addresses its importance as a tool to facilitate learning or various ways in which to make use of the text in the classroom” (3). As a collection, Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper contains informed, detailed, and diverse analysis that attempts to shore up the absence of “pedagogical possibilities” concerning Gilman’s transgressive short story (9). Among the contributors are a MOO space specialist, a Gilman scholar, a queer theorist, an existentialist, a formalist, and several reader/student-response theorists. Because each essayist presents a distinct critical perspective on Gilman’s text, each essay is likewise concerned with “how the narrative teaches and how to teach the narrative” (5). Thus, it seems to me that Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper resonates with Pedagogy’s conviction that teaching is central to our work as scholars and educators,...
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...With over 200 written works, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s career as a writer is a force to be reckoned with. Many of her works, such as the ever popular The Yellow Wallpaper, are considered classics and remain relevant in today’s society. Gilman is most popular for her work deciphering women’s roles and treatment in society in the past and during her life. Gilman’s works are relatable to all women who have experienced or are experiencing oppression by society. Gilman’s feminist outlook is clearly seen in her academic works as well as her short stories. Especially in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, feminism was starting to accumulate among women of all ages. Gilman has been compared to other great feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan and they all share a common theme: their personal life correlates with their writing. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal struggles with oppression contribute to her success as a feminist writer, as exemplified in her works Women and Economics, Herland and The Yellow Wallpaper; Gilman’s controversial opinions on male dominated societies and women's rights label her as an icon for implementing social change in the 18th/19th century because she steers away from traditional Victorian gender roles. Born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 3rd, 1860, growing up was difficult for Gilman and her brother as her parents split due to their different views on women’s rights. Her father’s family was very liberal and believed in freedom...
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...Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its contemporary criticism Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in a time when it was customary to consider women as the weaker sex, and in need of constant care and protection. There has been an overwhelming amount of literary criticism throughout the following century, with the purpose of establishing Gilman’s message. Most critics seem to agree that it is a strongly feminist text, targeting the patriarchal society of the late 19th century. Elaine Hedges sums up the most common readings of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in her essay. She herself then argues that the text’s essentially feminist point is emphasized by the fact that the narrator is destroyed by society, where she can never get free. Initially, she debates between two possibilities of what happens to the narrator in the end: she is either liberated in her madness or is defeated by it. Then she proceeds to consider the implications of the wallpaper itself. According to critics referred to by Hedges, the entangled pattern of the wallpaper itself represents a crucial text and it has been argued that this text is not written by the narrator. Instead, it is the text of social conventions and rules presented to her by her husband, and through him by the male-dominated society, where she is not allowed to write her own story. This is one of the reasons why her text then becomes “hopelessly encrypted in fantasy” (Hedges 225). Other interpretations connect the...
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...Michelle Feldner English 1302 March 28, 2013 Literary Analysis Essay At first glance, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story can be confusing to read. You may think you are reading about a woman who is losing her mind, or as the narrators husband says “there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression”(9), but in all actuality it’s about a woman who is suffering from post partum depression. Even though the plot of this story is based around her illness, there is another objective to the story, to deliver a completely unrelated message. Gilman seeks instead to evoke a message of individual expression and successfully does so by recording the progression of the illness, through the state of the wallpaper. In the story it’s apparent that the women allows herself to be inferior to men, particularly her husband, John. John is a physician and he orders her to not do anything, simply to rest. “Personally I disagree with their ideas,” she writes. ”Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?”(12-14) This statement shows her lack of self-confidence and feeling of inferiority. She is very accepting that her thoughts and opinions do not count. She belittles herself throughout the story several more times. Many people, in our society today, go through not being able to speak up for themselves with doctors. Although one knows what makes themselves feel better, but they...
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...Gilman with The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes this depressing short story called The Yellow Wallpaper that really explores the views of the medical world during the 19th century and how male doctors looked at woman with the postpartum depression as if it was no worse than the simple cold. Gilman uses Jane, a young woman, in her story to help express her own views of the feminist world. Along with these views Gilman uses her own journey and experiences through life to depict how painful and unproductive the rest cure actually was for women that male doctors diagnosed them with. As Jane is locked away in this room she begins to discover the woman inside the wallpaper and as she begins to peel away the paper it’s a way she becomes...
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...February 18, 2013 English - 205 Baby Blues Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “ The Yellow Wallpaper ”is a tragic story of a women in the 1890’s, whose oppressive treatment by her physian husband for her postpartum depression, causes her to spiral into madness. The setting is the narrator’s constant companion as she suffers through her rest therapy, which was the popular treatment at that time for women given to fits of “hysteria”(Gilman, [2006] p.487-491 ). The author focuses on the setting to get the reader’s attention, and to pull them into a world that the narrator has created to ensure her survival. The narrator has only her imagination while she suffers through her imprisonment alone. Away from her home, family, and friends in an isolated country house, she is forced to endure her quiet time in an aged nursery room. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, and a haunted house are a few of Gilman‘s descriptions used to to pique your curiosity. Subtle hints throughout the story make you wonder if this deserted rundown place was at one time some type of sanitarium, for instance; the barred windows, rings on the walls, gate at the head of the stairs, or the bed frame nailed to the floor. Yet as she notices these strange things, her denial quickly explains them away (p. 487-489) . This forced treatment of solitude seems only to contribute to her mental illness, which sends her into a severe depression. Trapped without any form of stimulation...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper: A Woman's Struggle Pregnancy and childbirth are very emotional times in a woman's life and many women suffer from the "baby blues." The innocent nickname for postpartum depression is deceptive because it down plays the severity of this condition. Although she was not formally diagnosed with postpartum depression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) developed a severe depression after the birth of her only child (Kennedy et. al. 424). Unfortunately, she was treated by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who forbade her to write and prescribed only bed rest and quiet for recovery (Kennedy et al. 424). Her condition only worsened and ultimately resulted in divorce (Kennedy and Gioia 424). Gilman's literary indictment of Dr. Mitchell's ineffective treatment came to life in the story "The Yellow Wallpaper." On the surface, this gothic tale seems only to relate one woman's struggle with mental illness, but because Guilman was a prominent feminist and social thinker she incorporated themes of women's rights and the poor relationships between husbands and wives (Kennedy and Gioia 424). Guilman cleverly manipulates the setting to support her themes and set the eerie mood. Upon first reading "The Yellow Wallpaper," the reader may see the relationship between the narrator and her husband John as caring, but with examination one will find that the narrator is repeatedly belittled and demeaned by her husband. On first arriving at the vacation home John chooses...
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...The narrator even states as such: “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do?” this indicates that the narrator believes that she has no choice but to agree, despite the fact she suspects that it’s her husband’s profession is the “One reason I do not get well faster.” Throughout the story her husband constantly overrides her judgements and makes condescending comments such as referring to her as his “Little girl” which Gilman does to realistically replicate the inequality, in terms of gender, in Victorian...
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...ENGL347: Women Writers: Assessed Essay “Becoming a mother will be the one thing that frees you as a woman. But it will also be the one thing that traps you...” – Anon. Discuss the way in which women writers use the concept of motherhood as a gender-divide to explore the themes of entrapment and escape in literature. Since the 19th century, the broader sense of literature as a ‘totality of written or printed works’, and the foundational means of communicating information or ideas, has given way to a range of more exclusive and specific definitions. The rapid growth of adult literacy, combined with economic, social and political developments have vastly increased the sheer spectrum and quantity of subject matter and forms which fall under this umbrella term, forcing the need for greater categorisation in order to make ‘literature’ more accessible to the general reader. The resulting categories which attempt to standardise this process may take many forms, including observation of the structure or literary genre of the text (for example, categorising the text as a novel, poem, report or article) or perhaps the particular literary period or movement, which will link all associated texts with underlying principles or stylistic traits, such as the Romantic era or Post-Colonial literature. However, due to a long-standing patriarchal tradition dominating the history of literature- a literary practice challenged and corrected by the rise of the Feminist movement, particularly following...
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...Hannah Banks E. Connor EN 210-016 15 February 2013 The Distance between the Reader and Characters in Realism Realism has a way of connecting with readers unlike any other type of literature prior with its honest and brutal interpretation on life. It not only focuses on only the truth and what is real but it looks at things in ways that had never been seen in a certain light before. Realism in American started to flourish in the following years after the civil war. This essay will briefly explain ways this takes place. Realism has a set of criteria that make it unique, and one of the critics doing so is William Cain. Morality, subjectivity, psychology, and the types of characters all help mold realism into what it is. Through the characters and how distant they are to the audience, it is easy to see how both Henry James’s “Daisy Miller: A Study” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” fit well within Cain’s ideas on realism in Literary Realism in America. When reading “Daisy Miller: A Study” the main character and protagonist is Winterbourne, but the most intriguing character is Daisy Miller. Unlike Winterbourne, you do not have access to her thoughts, and it is up to you and Winterbourne’s thoughts to determine what to think of her. “He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. And yet was...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper and the Wallpaper The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is about a woman (the narrator) who becomes crazy. She loses touch with the outside world because she is isolated in one room in such a large house. In this short story there are two symbols, people and the bedroom who affect the women in many different ways. Some of these things may seem innocent to her but are a little bizarre to us. The theme of this short story is self-expression. This poor woman is dealing with depression and is being forced to hide her fears and anxiety from everyone so it looks like she is winning the battle. The setting of this short story is mostly takes place in her bedroom. Her husband John is a physician and he said she is sick and needs to stay in her room and rest. So she can’t go outside or interactive with anyone or even her newborn baby. In the beginning of the short story she says “[The house] is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people." Meaning that the house looks like a quiet place surrounded by no other houses just like her, she was stuck in a quiet room with just herself. Also she said “A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity- but that would...
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...Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 i RTNA01 1 13/6/05, 5:28 PM READING THE NOVEL General Editor: Daniel R. Schwarz The aim of this series is to provide practical introductions to reading the novel in both the British and Irish, and the American traditions. Published Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890–1930 Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Daniel R. Schwarz Brian W. Shaffer Forthcoming Reading the Eighteenth-Century Novel Paula R. Backscheider Reading the Nineteenth-Century Novel Harry E. Shaw and Alison Case Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 Shirley Samuels Reading the American Novel 1865–1914 G. R. Thompson Reading the Twentieth-Century American Novel James Phelan ii RTNA01 2 13/6/05, 5:28 PM Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Brian W. Shaffer iii RTNA01 3 13/6/05, 5:28 PM © 2006 by Brian W. Shaffer BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Brian W. Shaffer to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and...
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...critical theory today critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D E D I T I O N L O I S T Y S O N New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Lois Tyson Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97410‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97410‑3 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950‑ Critical theory today : a user‑friendly guide / Lois Tyson.‑‑ 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97409‑7 (hb) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑97410‑0 (pb) 1. Criticism...
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