Comments on: The Feminist Lens: The Yellow Wallpaper

By: Best Practice, Feminist Practice « Editorializing the Editors

Best Practice, Feminist Practice « Editorializing the Editors — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:11:15 +0000

[...] content. Ashley — my gracious host — has demonstrated this in her post about teaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” and discussing its gendered themes outright. The [...]

By: Guest Post by L: Best Practice, Feminist Practice | Small Strokes

Guest Post by L: Best Practice, Feminist Practice | Small Strokes — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:32:19 +0000

[...] content. Ashley — my gracious host — has demonstrated this in her post about teaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” and discussing its gendered themes outright. The [...]

By: Ashley

Ashley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:20:20 +0000

Oh the story is awesome. I absolutely love it. And, for anyone following along here, the activity today (where I separated them into groups and had them each look at a different aspect of the story) went REALLY well. I set the bar and they stepped up to the plate. This makes me happy!

By: Criss

Criss — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:05:02 +0000

I feel grossly ignorant when it comes to women’s studies; I’ve never read “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or even heard of it. Now it’s on my list! The story sounds fascinating, and the history makes it even more intriguing. I wish I were in your class!

By: Ashley

Ashley — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:09:48 +0000

Becky, I’m DEFINITELY using your idea for a journal prompt, framing it as “If the story was a movie and you were working at a video store, what section would you file it under?” Gives it a little different context, so I might get some interesting answers. I’ll keep you posted!

Thanks!

By: Linda

Linda — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:31:31 +0000

I was taught the ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ in a similar manner when I was in h.s. (an all girls h.s. where feminism was automatically discussed).

In college though, I saw this short story again and again and some professors acknowledged the feminism within but didn’t really place weight on that notion (just said a sentence or two about it). Only one professor who created a ‘Monsters’ class, made it clear to us that various horror/ghost stories were disguised in order to speak about women’s rights! It’s amazing to see women ’speaking up’ in clever ways.

And thanks for teaching feminism in the classroom!

By: Emma

Emma — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:03:43 +0000

I teach Gilman’s text on a module I run for final year undergraduates here in the UK. It’s the opening text on a course called ‘Out of Their Minds: Representing Madness’, in which we look at both films and literature to determine how ‘madness’ is a culturally loaded and contingent term. Gilman’s narrator, suffering from post-partum depression would, one hopes, receive far better care today than she did a century ago. One senses that the benign, passive brutality of her doctor and husband has at its core a fundamental misunderstanding of how a woman might not be thrilled having just given birth.

On the module I link the book to a film, Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Sasom i en spegel’, or ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ (1961). This evocative film focuses on the summer vacation on a remote island of Karin, her brother, their father, and her husband. At the height (depth?) of her mental breakdown, Karin shuts herself in what one is led to believe is her dead mother’s bedroom, and sees – like Gilman’s protagonist – figures emerging from behind the busy patterns of the wallpaper.

The parallels are striking – gender, identity, family, misogyny, creativity – and book and film work very well together to illuminate one another.

By: Becky

Becky — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:51:01 +0000

Oooh! That’s ambitious for sophomores! Pretty sure I read it in Chapman’s Prac Crit. I had a high school teacher who made reference to it, and I tried to look it up (as a senior) but had no guidance because we weren’t doing it in class–so got confused and gave up.

I don’t know anything about teaching, but what if on day 2 you gave the students an open-ended question–in what category/genre would you place this story?–as opposed to asking them to choose horror or feminist?

Given that it’s the first week of school in a 21st-century, academically rigorous English class, it seems like many, if provided an either-or choice, would assume feminist is the “right” answer that you want them to give.

Also, when I studied this text for the first time, I was surprised to learn that it had been classified as a horror story–that might be an interesting thing to reveal after hearing what they come up with, rather than giving it away as one of two clear choices.