Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1 860-1935) and “The Yellow Wallpape r”
Transcript
Slide 1
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) and The Yellow
Wallpaper
Slide 2
I. Her life born in Hartford, Conn.,1860 her father deserting
the family, which thereafter lived in frequent movement and in near
poverty studying two years at Rhode Island School of Design,1878-80
marrying Charles Stetson, 1884 bearing her first daughter and
suffering from postpartum depression, 1885 beginning treatment with
Dr. Weir Mitchell, 1886 separating from Stetson and coming to
California, 1888 getting divorced with Stetson, 1894 marrying
George Houghton Gilman and beginning to live in NY, 1900 moving
from NY to Norwich, Conn., 1922 diagnosed with breast cancer, 1932
moving to California and living with her daughter after Georges
death, 1934 taking her own life, 1935
Slide 3
Slide 4
Slide 5
II. Her major works: The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892 Women and
Economics, 1898 Concerning the Children, 1900 The Home, 1904 Human
Work, 1904 Man-made World, 1911 Herland, 1915 His Religion and
Hers, 1923
Slide 6
III. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Slide 7
* The inspiration: Charlottes postpartum depression the rest
cure prescribed by Dr. Mitchell from confinement to near
insanity
Slide 8
*Comments The Yellow Wallpaper is a rich and intensive feminist
analysis of the norms of a patriarchal culture. The story is a
superb dramatization and relentless indictment of the oppressions
imposed on women by a patriarchal culture. The Yellow Wallpaper is
a presentation of how a woman undergoes mental deterioration and
finally loses her reason in the course of a rest cure, prescribed
for her depression. Feminists now see the story as an unapologetic
protest against societys subjugation of women and praise its
thematic depth.
Slide 9
Slide 10
Slide 11
Slide 12
IV. Whos behind the Bars? A Deconstructive Reading of The
Yellow Wallpaper
Slide 13
Introduction 1. Sanity and Insanity 2. Freedom and Bondage 3.
Male and Female Conclusion
Slide 14
Introduction One of Jacques Derridas major strategies in
invalidating logocentrism is to subvert the numerous binary
oppositionslike truth/error, speech/ writing, and male/femalewhich
are essential structural elements in logocentric language. Such
oppositions constitute a tacit hierarchy, in which the first term
functions as privileged and superior and the second term as
derivative and inferior. By subverting this hierarchy, Derrida
refutes what he calls an ultimate referenta self-certifying and
self- sufficient ground, available to us totally outside the play
of language itself, that is directly present to our awareness and
centers the structure of the linguistic system, and as a result
suffices to guarantee the coherence and determinate meanings of any
spoken and written utterance within that system.
Slide 15
Thesis statement: The Yellow Wallpaper, by a play of internal
counter-forces, disseminates into a range of self-conflicting
significations and its meaning is not so determinate as to justify
an unequivocal feminist reading.
Slide 16
1. Sanity and Insanity 1) The narrator may be insane in the
first place: A. She is not able to know her sickness; B. She feels
the old mansion haunted and hateful; C. She begins to see illusions
from the very start. 2) The narrator may remain sane throughout: A.
She keeps her diaries in neat order; B. Her acts on the last day
are well planned and strategic Conclusion for Part 1: the
distinction between the narrators sanity and insanity is not so
clear as most readings have tried to reveal.
Slide 17
2. Freedom and Bondage 1) The story dramatizes the theme of
women being suppressed and struggling for freedom: A. The narrator
sees underneath the wallpaper a woman behind bars; B. She sets the
woman free by stripping off the wallpaper. 2) The story is not a
celebration of womens liberation: A. The narrator enjoys
considerable freedom at first; B. She is not really free
ultimately. Conclusion for Part 2: Freedom and bondage are relative
and intertwined in the story, there being no marked boundaries
between them.
Slide 18
3. Male and Female 1) Gender differences give rise to the
tension between the couple: A. John is a physician, works in town,
and occasionally assumes supremacy over his wife; B. The narrator
has to stay at home and accept the rest cure. 2) Gender roles are
not fixedly delineated and allow of change: A. Jennie performs
Johns function in his absence; B. John behaves as a woman by
fainting and collapsing onto the floor. Conclusion for Part 3: The
frontier between genders is not easy to pin down and it may be
transgressed.
Slide 19
Conclusion: The warring forces of signification within The
Yellow Wallpaper make almost impossible a convenient and correct
reading of it; rather, it is capable of various interpretations.
The texts treatment of the three pairs of binary oppositions may
suggest, among others, that the very demarcation between sanity and
insanity is arbitrary and all humans are sane and insane at once,
that freedom and bondage are inseparable and absolute freedom is
unavailable to mankind, and that gender tensions are not so
difficult to ease and erase as those between people at large.
Viewed in this respect, the story is more of a presentation of
humanitys dilemma than a feminist one and the woman the narrator
sees behind the bars may as well be any other human being.