Tag Archives: “The Yellow Wall-Paper”

Glossary

Atrocious

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Atrocious (adj) – very bad, of very poor quality, horrifying

Source: Merriam-Webster

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atrocious

Found in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. page 59, paragraph 7

I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

She (the narrator) came to this new house for cure of her depression with her husband, but since the beginning of the story, her description of this house is very unpleasant and negative. And she is not getting better at all although she is staying in the house for her nursery.  So the nursery she is having right now is not really good or effective. Also she feels like the house is haunted and she doesn’t like the house where she has to stay for the summer for nursery. She might feel like she is in horrifying or cruel nursery.

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Week 5

Blogging on “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and “The Cottagette”

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Apologies for the lateness of these instructions. Here are a few options for your posts for this week. Choose one:

  • Choose two passages that epitomize the narrator of either of these stories. Explain what you understand about the passage and how it instructs you to read the narrator and her narration.
  • Consider the setting of these stories. Find a passage from each that identifies the setting, and compare how the settings help shape each into the drastically different stories that they are.
  • Using specific quotations from the story to support your claims, compare either or both of these stories in their depiction of marriage with any of the other marriages depicted in our readings this semester. Do you attribute the differences only to characterization and plot, or are there other ways these distinct situations are expressed?
  • Is there something else you’re eager to write about regarding “The Yellow Wall-Paper” or “The Cottagette”? Write it–but be sure to use quotations from the story or stories in your post.

Remember to follow our blogging guidelines, and categorize your post  Week 5 under Homework. Use any tags you find appropriate.

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Glossary

Congenial

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Congenial (adjective): 1: suitable or appropriate: pleasant and enjoyable: very friendly

2 a: existing or associated together harmoniously

b: pleasant; especially:  agreeably suited to one’s nature, tastes, or outlook (Merriam-Webster)

Found on Page 57, paragraph 14 of “The Yellow Wallpaper“–>“Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.”

I believe this word in the quote means that the narrator believed if she found work that suited with her personality and what she liked, then it would do her good. Since the narrator was forbidden from taking care of her child, doing her motherly duties, or taking care of household chores because of her mental illness, the narrator strongly felt that if she worked it would improve her mental wellness.

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Discussion

Discussion: “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and “The Cottagette”

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In class yesterday, we began talking about “Young Goodman Brown” but didn’t really get to “The Metamorphosis” at all. For our discussion this week, I’d like to offer the option that we try what Gavin suggested in class yesterday, that we return to previous discussions, in addition to starting the next discussion here.

To that end, please feel free to contribute something new to the discussion on “The Metamorphosis.”

Next, please contribute to our discussion here about “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and “The Cottagette” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

One topic for discussion is to comment on the kinds of narrators we find in these two short stories. In addition to identifying them using the terminology we have discussed on the site and in class, there is another aspect of the narrator we can think about: is the narrator of either story a reliable narrator or an unreliable narrator?

Another topic for discussion: we might use the words utopia and dystopia to describe these two short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that we read. What do those words mean? Which story is utopian and which is dystopian? Why?

As always, you should spend 75 minutes reading the online discussion and contributing to it. Your work should be in the form of a comment either to the discussion post, or to another comment in the thread.

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