Aim: How does Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” address the question of madness and one’s role in society?

Do Now: Discuss the following quotes:“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.”

- Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

19th Century New Woman

The emergence of an educated, free-thinking, independent woman

Begins to challenge the primarily domestic roles of women

Begins to exert control over her own life whether it was personal, social, economic, sexual – autonomy becomes a key goal (autonomy – one who gives oneself their own law)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Every kind of creature is developed by the exercises of its functions. If denied the exercises of its functions, it cannot develop in the fullest degree.”

Nursery-Prison

The nursery suggests she is being treated as a child - patronizing

Barred windows, nailed down bed, gate at the stairs

The protagonist finds herself in a prison-like setting both physically and of the mind

Gothic LiteratureGhosts, supernatural elements

Ruined buildings and structures, dark spaces, crumbling architecture, deterioration and decay

Wild landscape, lush forests, overgrown trees, cliffs and bluffs off the shore

Use of shadows and darkness, dimmed light sources

Passion driven villian-hero

Curious heroine

Protoganist isolated in some way

Gothic protagonist

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes in her essay, "The Structure of the Gothic Convention,” that the idea of a protagonist having a struggle with a terrible, surreal person or force is a metaphor for an individual's struggle with repressed emotions or thoughts (Sedgwick 1).