Name: _________________________
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER – GUIDED NOTE TAKING
Since you’ll be using the English III textbook and cannot annotate, think of these questions more as
guided note-taking.

While writing in complete sentences is important, it’s not your job for this assignment.

Keep these questions at your side and preview them before you read each page, so you’re ready
to jot down notes and inferences as you read.

This is a difficult story. Skimming won’t suffice. Embrace the confusion and don’t feel the least bit
daft if you need to reread a page numerous times. Good readers reread.
NOTES FOR PAGE 798 (Preview the questions before you read each page!)
1. Question: What is Gilman attempting to show us in the first sentence?
2. Question: What would make the narrator reach “the height of romantic felicity”?
*felicity – (noun) happiness; joy
3. Question: What is the writer already trying to show us about the narrator?
4. Question: How does John differ from his wife?
5. Question: What conflict is the writer already setting up, or at least hinting at?
NOTES FOR PAGE 800
1. What does the narrator mean when she says, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas”?
A. Who does she disagree with? (What two people?)
B. What specific ideas does she disagree with?
2. (Lines 32-42). A. What seems odd about the place they’re renting?
B. Make a prediction or guess about the setting. (What was it? Or…What is it?)
3. (Lines 43-58) Read this set of lines very carefully. Based on this passage, what are some inferences
you can make about the narrator’s marriage?
NOTES FOR PAGE 801
4. Why does the narrator believe the room she’s in was once a nursery?
5. What do you think?
6. (Lines 71-80) What’s the narrator’s TONE when she describes the wallpaper?
Pick an adjective: ___________________ (Tone = attitude towards the wallpaper)
7. List at least three diction choices that support your adjective choice for #9.
8. (Lines 82 to the bottom of p. 801) Take note of how the narrator is in conflict.
A. What has she been told to believe about herself?
B. But… what, in reality, does she actually feel?
NOTES FOR PAGE 802
9. Who do you think Mary is?
10. What else do we find out about the narrator’s room that seems strange?
11. How would you characterize the way John talks to his wife?
NOTES FOR PAGE 803
12. (Lines 119-130) What are two ways the narrator’s activities and experiences have been restricted?
A.
B.
13. (Lines 140-147) What evidence shows the narrator was an imaginative child?
NOTES FOR PAGE 804
14. By describing what makes John’s sister happy in life, as well as what she feels she must hide from
this woman, what can we infer about the narrator’s dream or goal for her own life?
15. What does the narrator believe she sees in the wallpaper?
16. Who is Weir Mitchell?
17. What’s kooky about the narrator’s bed?
NOTES FOR PAGE 805
18. A. How is the narrator interacting with the wallpaper?
B. Why—from a practical standpoint—might it command so much of her attention?
19. When she attempts to have a “reasonable talk” with John, what specifically does she request?
(805).
20. Why is she not able to make a “very good case for [her]self”? (805).
NOTES FOR PAGE 806
21. What does John think the narrator needs to do (or not do) to get well?
22. Why might John’s advice be unrealistic as well as unfair?
NOTES FOR PAGE 807
23. A. What truth—what specific idea—is the narrator trying to communicate to her husband?
B. Why is she not successful? (Look especially at lines 284-288.)
NOTES FOR PAGE 808-809
(STOP reading at line 347--“There is a week more, and I think that will be
enough)
24. (Lines 301-318) What is the narrator seeing in the wallpaper at night?
25. What evidence suggests the narrator has become suspicious and distrustful of John and Jennie?
26. The narrator says, “I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out” (809). What do you think “it” is?
27. Make a PREDICTION! What do you think is going to happen?
28. A. Why would the character Gilman has created be described as an “unreliable narrator”?
B. How does this affect the way we as readers experience the story?