“JUST LATHER” DOCUMENTS
“THE YELLOW WALLPAPER” DOCUMENTS
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Yellow Wallpaper Discussion Questions
Read for context: The Literature of Prescription
Women’s Roles
1. Read Coventry Patmore’s The Angel in the House
2. Read Marcus’s letter to his wife, Ulrike: Marcus to Ulrike
3. Read these three pages on “Gender and the Nineteenth Century Home”: Motherhood; Marriage; and Literature
4. Read “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper'”
The Suffrage Movement
1. Read Gilman’s Suffrage Statement
2. Read this Declaration from the First Women’s Rights Convention.
3. Read the newspaper responses to this convention.
4. Finally you may wish to read this long but thoughtful piece which was penned by a prof who teaches “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This piece was written during the 2017 American presidential campaign and makes some interesting parallels between Gilman’s story and the treatment of Hillary Clinton. Hysteria, Witches, and the Wandering Uterus is an optional read, but a fascinating one.
Mental Illness
1. This is a bit of a hard read, but do your best. Read American Nervousness by George Beard, 1881. Start on the third paragraph on pg 336 to the end of the selection.
2. Read Wear and Tear by S. Weir Mitchell, 1871. Read the second paragraph on pg 33, and then pg 37 to 40.
3. Read https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/education/materials/Fat-and-Blood.pdf by S. Weir Mitchell, 1837. Start with the third paragraph on pg 37 and read to pg 40.
4. Read The Rest Cure Revisited by Diana Martin, 2007.
And, finally, Faima Bakar’s editorial “It’s not a woman’s responsibility to make a man a better human being” is a modern day interrogation of the Angel in the House ideology– an interesting meditation on Ariana Grande, Mac Miller, and women as moral saviours (with guest appearances by Courtney Love and Childish Gambino).
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