Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Analyzing Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper
- Plot
- Beginning
- 1) Jane and John went to a colonial mansion to rest from her illness and she enjoyed the beauty of the place
except for her room because of the yellow wallpaper.
- 2) John rejected her request to change rooms. After awhile, she noticed a strange figure hiding behind the
wallpaper.
- Climax
- 1) Jane was afraid of John and Jennie for staring at the wallpaper and decided that she would find out the
truth behind it.
- 2) Later on, she met a woman behind the wallpaper, tore it down and slept under it for months
- Ending
- 1) Jane is with her family but refused to leave the room and locked herself in until John wanted to break
down the door with an axe.
- 2) Jane asked John to open the door with a key and he did but was shocked by her condition and fainted right
across her path by the wall, causing her to creep over him every now and then.
- Setting
- Late 19th Century
- A Colonial Mansion
- Isolated, well back from the road quite three miles from the village.
- Jane’s Bedroom
- Big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore.
- At Night
- John was asleep and Jane felt uneasy about the wallpaper because of the faint figure that seemed to shake
the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.
- Midnight
- Jane saw a woman behind a wallpaper and creep out.
- Characters
- Jane
- John
- Julia
- Jennie
- Henry
- Jane’s brother
- Weir Mitchell
- Mary
- Jane’s baby
- Characterization
- Jane
- Have temporary nervous depression with slight hysterical tendency.
- On a rest cure and often disobey John by writing secretly.
- Loves the colonial mansion but frustrated & unhappy at the yellow wallpaper
- Imaginative, smart and understand arts also gets distracted easily
- Gradually she needs to make effort to think straight, and emotionally stable.
- Jane ‘sees’ things, and become worse, mentally and insomniac
- She cares of her baby, and John.
- She changed info someone else like the creeping woman.
- John
- A physician & does not believe anything supernatural but facts and evidence
- Loving and caring husband loves his wife very much
- Controlling but with a good reason
- Always absent from his home, not beside his wife most of the time due to the job
- Not for sharp about his wife when she changed and hid something from him
- Very shocked at the changes and how bad it became on his wife
- Theme
- Jane's creativity vs John's rationality
- Creativity
- She thrives in her use of imagination.
- Her creativity is an inherent part of her nature (as she likes to write)
- Eg. She likes to think a lot. Refers lines 120-126
- Rationality
- The husband did not recognized her imaginative fancies
and replace it with his own solid rationality.
- Eg. refers lines 141-144
- Role of women in the 19th century
- Women were expected to fulfil their duties as wives and mothers and be content in their existence as nothing
more.
- Men in public
- Women in private sphere
- Eg. Jane is not allowed to write (husband use the rest cure as an excuse not to let her write)