Friday, February 10 - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Friday, February 10Slide2

Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”Slide3

From the class blog:Slide4

The character of the story is put forth as very creative, as through her vivid imagination of seeing people interwoven in random pattern designs as well as her in-depth knowledge of historical art forms such as

Romanque

. The character is also feeling an intense

self-pity

to which she is projecting onto her hallucination of “the woman trapped and creeping inside the wallpaper.” The female narrator later says that perhaps it is many women trapped in that wallpaper, suggesting that the Victorian era, during which this story was written, has

restricted women in their freedoms

to do what they want to do in life. This concept of having women rest rather than work was thought of during the Victorian era indeed to be in their best interest, as exemplified in the thought of Victorian England's classic phrase that “women should not play Chess, as their brain matter is more fragile and they in turn have a greater risk of fainting.”

Indeed, the story reveals a character of intense creativity.

—

MichaelSlide5

[The Narrator] feels trapped behind bars, much like the imaginary woman behind the wallpaper. Her husband is not very helpful and in fact seems to care the least about her, as when he tells her to get better “for my sake, the child’s sake and your own sake.”. She feels the need to

escape

, but in her attempts she gets caught and she is unable to move. In her description of the wallpaper she mentions that “the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down”. . . . At the end of the story, when she is crawling on the floor rubbing her shoulder in the smooch on the wall, it makes me think about how

perhaps this place has been used for other women with a “nervous disorder”.

This brings together many of the points mentioned prior, such as how the bed is nailed to the ground, how the room seemed to be treated violently, and how she sees multiple other women stuck behind the wallpaper trying to break free from the bars and the chains.

This story is more than just a diary of a nervous woman: it represents the struggle of all women desperately seeking autonomy during this time period

. The men are in control, guiding the women’s every choice and move. Perhaps

the front layer of the wallpaper represents the force of men

, never allowing the women behind to get past without killing them (or their freedom). What other forms of symbolism do you see in this story? Do you agree with some of the points I’ve made? Why/Why not?

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SadieSlide6

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is densely packed with

powerful symbols

and a palpable tone. A couple spends the summer at an old mansion; he, a

practising

doctor in town, and she, there to convalesce. The story follows the

internal and external struggles

of the doctor’s wife who remains nameless for the duration of the story.

There is a matter of fact tone to the story that belies the intensity of the conflict the doctor’s wife endures over the summer.

She spends the duration of her time virtually imprisoned in an upper floor former nursery and left mostly to her own thoughts. She struggles the most with the wallpaper. Everything is symbolic of something else in the story. The wallpaper seems to symbolize both her husband’s and, in general, men’s belief that women should be treated, and are, like children.

What are the door, the rope, and the key under a plantain leaf at the end of the story symbolic of? Why those specific symbols?

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NickSlide7

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was incredibly and increasingly disturbing to read. At the onset the reader begins to understand the social context of the era in which the main character is repressed under the guise of being cared for by her husband and doctor. At that time, the treatment he prescribes is the accepted method for dealing with the troubles she is having. But when compared to the standards of today, one cannot help but be frustrated by the methods used by the husband figure and it is not surprising in the end what becomes of the main character considering her mental state and the situation in which the “treatment” places her. The main character is left all day with nothing to occupy herself but the increasingly fantastic imaginings of her mind in the fragile state that it is. With nothing to occupy her mind, her

imagination

, which is established as being very active even as a child, takes over as she begins to obsess over the “yellow wallpaper” in her room. She spends hours of every day for three months contemplating its patterns and

colours

and shadows. It is little wonder that she ended up going crazy—many people would have ended up in a similar state after suffering the same environment for that extended period of time.

In what way did the husband’s treatment ultimately result in his wife’s end state? Would the main character have ended up in a similar state if it had not been for her almost complete isolation and forced idleness?

—

EmilySlide8

Vanderhaeghe’s “Cages”Slide9

The Puritan:

Much of your fiction describes the Canadian prairie landscape with a

passionate, vivid attention to detail, leaving the reader with a

powerful impression of

the fine line between savage inhospitality and soft, sensual beauty. How much

does

the geography of the prairies influence your work? To what degree does the

very

structure and form of your prose share a kinship or likeness to the land?

Vanderhaeghe:

The prairie landscape has had a great influence on my work because I have spent my entire life experiencing it, and inhabiting it. It’s second nature to me (no pun

intended

). Like any other writer, I write what I know. That said, my representation of it is instinctive and largely unconscious. Familiar images invest my mind and I struggle to render them in words. This, of course, has an influence on the prose because the prose has to attempt a verbal representation of the visual. But the prose has to be flexible—eliciting starkness demands a spare prose, a more elaborate and ornate image summons up something more baroque.

— from an

interview (“Speaking Personally” 72-73) with Vanderhaeghe in

The Puritan

(June, 2008)Slide10

Interviewer:

One idea that comes out of that is the sense of a masculine identity that, speaking very generally, is vexed. And that comes through in a lot of your short fiction — not just in

Man Descending.

Vanderhaeghe:

It’s very confused business. I was born in 1951. I was surrounded by uncles who had fought in the Second World War. Some of them had been wounded. A lot of my uncles left home when they were fourteen years old to get jobs during the depression. So I was raised by an incredibly stoical generation who accepted hardship and would never be caught bitching and whining. I had that one template in my mind. And then in the 1960s, suddenly men were supposed to become loving flower children, which was a huge clash in emotional and philosophical temperament. And though I certainly didn’t immerse myself in that, I could see the value of it. I was never really a hippie, unlike other people who went off in communes and did that kind of thing. So there was one set of beliefs that I was raised with that was challenged by another set of beliefs through the 1960s and 1970s, and then there was a kind of regression to materialism in the 1980s, which also folded into the 1990s. For me, given my age, it’s almost like there were three decades of confusion. The demands and assertions of feminism had to be negotiated, had to be accepted. actually, what I’m talking about here is historical forces that impinge on individuals. Since the women’s movement, 95% of the change in men has been great. I’m sure my father never changed a diaper in his life. I’m sure my father never gave me a bottle. I’m sure that my father did none of those nurturing things. So the way I was raised was almost a preternaturally masculine way, which was not good. But then I think that one of the things that

men

, particularly young men, encountered was “What does it mean to be a male when these ‘old things’ are set aside?” You can go through a whole list of things. I remember, when I was very young, women saying of men, “He’s a good provider.” Men stopped being good providers in

the

sense that women also became good providers, just in the way that men contributed to housework, child nurturing — though maybe not as much as they should have [laughter] — while women went to work. My generation was often described as particularly masculine, which

meant

physical prowess (sometimes regrettably associated with violence) and tended to be thought of as atavistic in some sense. So there were a whole series of things considered to be male identity markers that suddenly disappeared. Then the question that arrived was “What is left

to

define a male over and against what defines a female?” The women had, I think, arrived at a very strong definition of themselves. The men weren’t sure what it meant to be male. Now, I grant that’s a huge, sweeping generalization. But it came to be a question of “What are masculine

virtues that are valuable virtues?” and that’s very problematic” (264-265)

—

from “Guy Talk”: An Interview with Guy Vanderhaeghe

(

SCL/ÉLC interview by Nicola a.

Faiet

)