Yellow Wallpaper Cornell Notes
Title: Yellow Wallpaper
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
QUESTIONS
Why did she marry a man so different from herself, so
disinclined to believe her? Was it arranged?
Why would John not believe his own wife? Why would Jenny
not believe her?
Are John’s ‘medicines’ and ‘routines’ the reason she isn’t
getting better?
Is not being around people helping to cause the problem?
Date: 3/21/25
NOTES
“Haunted house” and “height of romantic felicity” - believes in fate and ghosts
John (physician, her husband) - practical, no patience with faith, horror of superstition
Dispositions at odds with each other
John is the reason she’s still sick?
Illness is mental and John believes she’s not actually sick
Physician = physical, not mental
Is the ‘illness’ because of postpartum depression - she just had
a baby
Not tired of writing but of hiding the writing
What is the significance of the wallpaper? Does it reflect her
state of mind?
No room if John were to take another what?
Why does John call her ‘little girl’?!!!
Does she identify as one of the women behind the wallpaper?
Is that who she’s becoming?
Why is the room she’s staying in compared to an asylum so
often - bars on walls, chewed bed, bed chained to floor, etc.
She can’t control her condition but John thinks she can (sort of like the couple in Memento)
John does not see her suffering - he sees what he wants to see
John cautions her to not give way to imagination and story-telling - what else is there to do trapped in a room alone?!
She says it is discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about her work - is this perhaps one of the true problems?
She’s been seeing things since childhood - active imagination
Sees a figure behind the wallpaper, creeping
Did she hang herself?
Her illness is getting worse
Why in spite of herself?
“woman stooping down and creeping about” behind the wallpaper
What does John see when he enters? Why does he - the big,
strong man, faint? Did she hang herself?
John calls her “little girl” - so weird.
Feels possessive over the wallpaper woman
Sometimes sees multiple women, sometimes only one
“most women do not creep by daylight” - but they do by night?
“I always lock the door when I creep by daylight” - she’s creeping now? Similar to lady in the wall
Finally goes insane and pulls off the wallpaper
The bedstead is chewed - asylum-like
Rope up here to tie up the woman in the wall - herself?
Bites the bed
Doesn’t jump out of the window because it’s improper and might be misconstrued
Believes that she came out of the wallpaper like the other women
Thinks she is one of them now and must get back behind the wallpaper at night
Crawls around the room, creeping, her shoulder in the smooch
“Got out at last in spite of you and Jane?” - why a question mark? Why herself?
“You can’t put me back!”
Yellow Wallpaper Cornell Notes
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SUMMARY
In the book ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a story written in 1982, the main character, Jane, is suffering from a mental illness akin to postpartum depression that her husband John, a physician, does not believe
exists. Stuck in a room covered in yellow wallpaper not unlike an asylum, with the bed chewed and bars on the windows, Jane slowly goes insane as she watches the women creeping around behind the wallpaper, trapped as she feels
trapped. The wallpaper reflects her state of mind, creeping and crawling ever closer to insanity until the day that she finally tears it all down, ripping the paper off the walls with her bare hands and becoming one of the women she fancies
seeing behind the walls. The story culminates in a scene where John finds her in her room, the wallpaper torn down, creeping around the room tied to a rope. He promptly faints and the readers are left to wonder what really happened to
Jane - did she hang herself with the rope or did she continue crawling over his body to freedom, finally living a life away from the man who is the real cause of her illness instead of the one protecting her from it. The story criticizes how
women’s mental illnesses were treated in the late 1900s, written by someone whose experiences weren’t so far from Jane’s. Its publication has saved many women from a similar fate and even changed the treatments of many physicians
who would have otherwise driven their patients to insanity.
Yellow Wallpaper Cornell Notes
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