Tag Archives: unreliable narrator

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

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.