Question:
"The Yellow Wallpaper"
Part I:
Read "The Yellow Wallpaper".In your groups, using the small group discussion board, consider the following questions:
Describe the character in "The Yellow Wallpaper." Is she flat or round, representative or individual?
In the beginning, the narrator refers to her husband John and herself as "ordinary people." What makes the setting and the people at the beginning of the story seem so ordinary? What kind of ordinary person does the narrator seem to be?
When do you notice the first hints of something extraordinary?
Is there an antagonist-protagonist relationship in this story? Why or why not?
What and how do you learn about the narrator's illness? What and how do you learn about the treatment proposed by the doctor-husband?
How does the wallpaper become an obsessive preoccupation in this story? How does its appearance slowly change and shift? How does its meaning change or evolve as the central symbol in the story? What are some major stages?
What is the symbolic contrast between the garden and the enclosed, confined room? Why does the woman, herself, throw the key away?
What, for you, is the symbolic meaning of the way the story ends? Can the ending be read as a kind of liberation? Why or why not?
Part II:
Read the two sample student papers reading the Charlotte Perkins Gilman text (pages 254-258). After reading these two different readings, consider the following questions:
Discussions of the story find symbolic meaning in many key elements of the story. How do the two papers compare in their interpretation of key symbols? How do they read the symbolic meaning of the wallpaper pattern, the woman behind the paper, the creeping, and the peeling of the paper?
Critics have probed the symbolic meaning of the colors green and yellow that play a major role in the story. Do the student writers agree in their reading of the color symbolism in the story?
Like the writing of other earlier women authors, Gilman's story is read by today's readers with a new awareness of traditional gender roles and women's issues. How do the two student papers compare in their estimate of what the story means to today's woman and today's man?
Part III:
Examine your group's first set of responses and look for ways in which your interpretations agreed with and/or disagreed with the sample student essays.
As a group, create one essay that summarizes your group's responses to all of the questions above.