Questions over "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Questions:

Section 1:

Why do you think Gilman wants the family to live in an ancestral house as opposed to a new one?

Go through this section and keep an eye on the marriage here.  Does she seem to have complaints about it?  How does she deal with the complaints?

Go through this section and look for a divide between the way the narrator feels and the way she wants to be seen by the world around her.

Why does the narrator seem so careful not to say her views are any more than “personal”?

Why does she look at the garden?

What does the narrator REALLY seem to think of John?  How does she seem to think she SHOULD think of John?

Why do you think John doesn’t want her to write?  Why do you think she writes anyway?

Section 2:

What do you think about the room argument?  Do you think John should renovate the room?  Why or why not?

Do you think that the narrator really wants to get well?  Why or why not?

Why do you think the room starts to come to life?

The wallpaper has a subpattern at this point.  Does the viewpoint of the narrator – the “pattern” she thinks she is supposed to live according to – have a subpattern also, at this point?  If so, what does it look like and how can you tell?

What is the significance of Jenny being a housekeeper?  What might the narrator’s attempt to hide from Jenny be symbolic of?

Section 3:

In the beginning of this section, she is afraid of being sent away if she doesn’t get well.  What correlation might this have to what we do to people who don’t get mentally well?  Keeping your answer to this question in mind, what is the significance of the psychiatrist she might be being sent to being “just like John and my brother, only more so!”?

Why do you think she likes the fact that the wallpaper has a “pointless patter” and lacks a firm design?

What is the significance of the way the wallpaper images seem to scatter and become “distracted” in the face of light?  How might this dynamic have a correlation to the narrator’s own mood?

Section 4:

John says that no one but the narrator’s self can help her out of her madness.  Do you think he really believes this?  Why or why not?

Why is it so hard for her to “think straight” (clue – when is it hard for you to “think straight”?)?  Is it good to “think straight”?  Who decides what “thinking straight” is?

What do you think of the quote “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.”  Can you relate to it?

How much do you think John needs the narrator, looking at this section?  How can you tell?

Why is the woman “creeping” behind the pattern?  Why the sneaking around?

Section 5:

Why does the moon “creep” (like the woman behind the wallpaper)?  Or is there a reason?

What’s up with John calling the narrator a “little girl”?  What do you think he thinks of her by using this phrase?

Why does her appetite fluctuate according to whether John is there or not?

Who wins the argument in this section, as best as you can tell from reading this section?

She’s quiet and submissive on the outside at the end, but what is she feeling on the inside?  Have you ever felt a similar way?  If so, why did you act this way, and what might that have to do with why she is acting this way?

Section 6:

What do you think of the quote “You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are.  It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you” as an observation on understanding life in general?  Do you relate to it?

Why does she choose to compare the pattern to fungus?   And why does the fungus become bars when light shines on it?  (Clue – when, in life, do you feel most natural, organic, and connected to the world?  When do you feel most “caged” in?  How might your own life experiences help you answer this question?)

Why did it take her until now to realize that the pattern behind the wallpaper is a woman?  Why is she sure it is a woman?

Why does she start thinking that other people are thinking the same way she is thinking?  (Clue – do you/have you ever put yourself in someone else’s shoes and ascribed motives to what they did that they didn’t actually have?  Do people that think they are insane think that everyone else thinks the same way they do?  Or do they think their way of thinking is not normal?)

How does the fact that the wallpaper is staining everything around it blur the lines between the wallpaper as symbol and the rest of the room as reality?  Is the story the real “Yellow Wallpaper” that seeks to stain our own realities?

Why do you think the narrator wishes to keep knowledge of the yellow wallpaper to herself?

Section 7

Why, as best as you can tell, is she starting to improve?  How is she able to appear well to John when, if he looked at her mind, he would conclude that she was not?  Is appearance reality?

Why do you think she suddenly wants to stay here?

Section 8

Why is she so obsessed with this wallpaper – which symbolizes “old, foul, bad yellow things”?

How does she seem to have difficulty comprehending the wallpaper in this section?  How might this difficulty correlate to her comprehending her own life?  (Search the section for specific examples for this one).

What’s up with the smell?  Why did she dislike it before, and then slowly become “used to it”?

Section 9

What do you think the yellow wallpaper represents?  Why would “a great many women” be behind it?

Why does the woman keep still in the bright spots and shakes the bars of the wallpaper in the dark spots?  (Clue – when do you most rebel against restrictions – in the light or in the dark?  Why?)

Is it possible to escape from the yellow wallpaper?  What happens to those that get close?  Why? (Clue – is it possible to escape from society’s definition of your place?  What happens to those who try?  Why?)

Section 10

What is the significance of this woman creeping in the daylight, which “most women” do not do?

Who do you think this woman behind the wallpaper represents, from looking at this section?  What is the significance of the different places she creeps at?

Section 11

Do you think John is really “loving and kind”?  Why or why not?

At the beginning, she wanted to wallpaper down.  Now, she wants the top patter down.  Does her desire at the beginning have a connection to her desire at the end of the story?

Why is she so untrusting and suspicious concerning her thoughts in this section?

Section 12

What is the significance of Jenny wanting to sleep with her?  What is the significance of her not wanting to sleep with Jenny?

Why does the narrator emphasize the way the woman in the yellow wallpaper helps her pull it down – is camaraderie necessary for pulling down barriers and trashing definitions?  (Clue – what might the dynamic here have to do with the Emily Dickinson poem “I am nobody – who are you?”)

Why do you think she wants to astonish John so badly?  Have you ever wished to “astonish” an authority figure in a similar way?  What was your motivation?

At the bottom of 1608, she is worried about being “misconstrued.”  Is she right for holding herself back?  Why or why not?

Why does she want to stay in the room?

Finally…why does John faint?  Have you ever reacted a similar way when someone acted a way that didn’t fit into the way you defined them or wanted them to be?  What was your reaction?