Tag Archives: The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow WallPaper

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Choose three quotations from thenYellow Wallpaper that convince you that the protagonist is an unreliable narrator and explain why for each.

The Narrator is a young, upper middle class woman, who is newly married and a mother, who is suffering from depression. The narrator whose name may or may not be Jane is highly imaginative and a natural storyteller, though her doctors believe she has a “slight hysterical tendency.” The story is told in the form of her secret diary, in which she records her thoughts as her obsession with the wallpaper grows. which could be that maybe not everything  was a fancy and she’s an unreliable narrator.

” Sometimes I think it’s a great many women behind , and sometimes only one , and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it all over ”

The protagonist can not make up her mind whether there is one woman in the wallpaper or many. I don’t believe she is depicting herself to be in the right state of mind because it is conflicting to speak about walk paper and to suggest that a woman on the wall paper is crawling to make it shake. Maybe this woman, or these women were only in her imagination. The protagonist is proving to be an unreliable narrator here because she is unable to convince you of one thought without considering another.

” John is a physician( and perhaps I would not say this to a living soul of course, but this dead paper and a great relief to my mind.)Perhaps that is one reason I don’t get well faster”

I feel that the protagonist is unreliable in this statement because it is not clear her husband is or not a real physician. Though she never actually completed her thought she always  contradicts herself several times. The narrator who is telling this story about herself states that shel was talking to dead paper when in reality she was talking to herself because the paper was never alive.

“I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?”

this is final scene, just before John finally breaks into her room, the narrator has finished tearing off enough of the wallpaper that the woman she saw inside is now free and the two women have become one.The woman behind the pattern was an image of herself she has been the one “stooping and creeping.”

 

 

The Yellow Wall Paper

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Choose three quotations from “The Yellow Wall-Paper” that present the married couple’s relationship, and explain what you understand about John as a character, and about the protagonist as a narrator for the way she depicts John.

I found that John was not a very good husband to her, he did not really concern about her condition. John seemed to be putting off her feelings. I felt as if her delusional state of mind was getting worse because they kept her in the room. IN my opinion john and his sister were actually  torturing her. In her mind John was a great loving husband, but I think in reality he treated her like a child, most times he was brushing off her dilemma. he  John referred to her as a child and a little “goose” he belittled her as a competent adult.

The narrator had a different outlook on John than I did, in my opinion John and his decision making on behalf of her, were a great part of why she could not get better. Despite John being a successful physician , he seemed to be avoiding that his wife’s mental health was deteriorating, through out the story it seemed that John was negligent. John was  he was evaluating her sickness  by her physical apreace, skin color eating habbits etc.. instead of her mental illness which was not getting any better as the reading proceeded. I can say that she loved her husband and she believed he cared for her, but he disregarded and her condition and contributed to her getting worse because he never removed her form the room were she was being haunted, in fact he made her stay there.

Phosphate

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Phosphate

phos¡phate

[fos-feyt]

noun

  -found in Chemistry

A carbonated drink of water and fruit syrup containing a little phosphoric acid.
I encountered this word in “The Yellow Wallpaper”  on the first page in the 12th paragraph. This will be discussed in week 3 of class. The handout title is THE YELLOW WALLPAPER.
” So I take phosphates or phosphites- whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am will again.”
It is nice to know what this word means so I can understand what she is taking. I had no idea if it was a drug, drink, etc.

Chintz

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Chintz – Noun

  • A printed cotton fabric, glazed or unglazed, used especially for draperies.

Found in: “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.”

This passage means that she wanted a different room, A much prettier one, with flowers on the windows with a curtain made of a fancy fabric.