The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper”

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Questions

1. Several times at the beginning of the story, the narrator says such things as “What is one to do?” and “What can one do?” What do these comments refer to? What, if anything, do they suggest about women’s roles at the time the story was written?

-When this story was written, women were thought of as ‘possessions’, not as an individual identity. Their roles were extremely confined to staying in the house, supporting their father or husband and acting in such sophisticated ways. Thus, the narrator kept on repeating, “What is one to do?” and “What can one do?”

2. The narrator says, “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes”. How unreasonable is her anger at him? What does the fact that she feels it is unreasonable say about her?

- She normally keeps her anger and stuffiness to herself, thinking her husband is only trying to make her ‘better’. She is also convinced that she actually has weakness in her nerves, since her husband, as a physician, always says so. She is unconsciously aware that her husband is the one who is driving her crazy, but her conscious is defying it. Thus, she thinks her anger towards John is unreasonable, thinking that the problem is herself.

3. What do her changing feelings about the wallpaper tell us about the changes in her condition?

- She doesn’t realize what was happening to the wall at first, only noticing something wrong with it. At this point, she doesn’t show much skepticism toward John at first, too. She actually agrees with him that she is psychologically unstable. However, as time goes by, she starts to notice a woman who is caged, blocked by yellow wallpaper, who makes every effort to get out of it, but can’t. This woman, probably representing the narrator, resembles her. The narrator begins to untrust John and his sister Jane, mentioning them as ‘sly’ and ‘pretending’. She, in turn, also starts to use her smart brain to get out of hateful situations and do what she wants.

4. “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so”. His wisdom is, to say the least, open to question, but what about his love? Do you think her suffers merely from a failure of perception, or is there a failure of affection as well?

- John fails in both perception and affection. This is inevitable for most men in this period of time since both perception and affection are dependent on culture, society and especially education of the time.

5. Where precisely in the story do you think it becomes clear that she has begun to hallucinate?

- At the point where she sees something moving on the wall.

6.  What does the woman behind the wallpaper represent? Why does the narrator come to identify with her?

- Answered on question 3

7. How ill does the narrator seem at the beginning of the story? How ill does she seem at the end? How do you account for the change in her condition?

- She may have gotten physically better, but not psychologically. She was normal before she met John, I believe, but started to get worse since John’s diagnosis of naming her ‘unstable’. Her imagination became wilder and broader, which made her insane, although this is all John’s fault. John names her unstable and seeks to cure it, but ironically, his faulty ‘diagnosis’ in turn drove her crazy.