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| The whole library exhibit |
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| Drawings of The Yellow Wallpaper |
The library exhibit on the Charlotte Perkins Gilman added many components to the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", for me.
The first addition to my information of the story and author was her drawings of key scenes in the story. I work much better visually and it formed a more well-rounded picture of the narrator in the story's surroundings. In the image to the right are these drawings. The top drawing is of the bars on the windows of the narrators designated room. I always thought the bars were either figurative or were there for the children who occupied the room before her. Her attachment to the window in the image leads me to believe the bars were put on to keep the narrator in. The drawing in the bottom right shows the narrator discovering the "other woman" trapped inside the wallpaper. I believe this character now represents not only the narrator being trapped but also Gilman's actual hallucinations during the treatment. It adds a new level of the amount of stress put on the narrators mind in the story not just representation of being trapped as a female. The last drawing added the most to the story for me. One of the suggestions during our class discussion was that her husband killed himself and the narrator's word "fainted" was only because of her delusion. Clearly in the drawing he did not kill himself but he did faint and she did crawl over him. However the personality of the narrator is more caring in the drawing. In the story she just crawls right over him, but the drawing shows her trying to pull him up. It changes the mental state of the narrator to a more "sane" or caring one instead of a dominant one.
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| Life events of Gilman |
The other additional information I gathered was Gilman's personal history. How she grew up in particular helped me contextualize The Yellow Wallpaper. Her first (unhappy) marriage and child also added to this. Her life as a woman had been typical up to the point of "The Yellow Wallpaper". In my paper I wrote on her purpose for writing the Yellow Wallpaper. She had so much to break free from as child, wife, and mother. "The Yellow Wallpaper" acted as an actual form of therapy for her as well as to show others what rest-cure did to women. It was interesting to see my theory of writing as therapeutic play out through her life. Her childhood was torn by her father and her unhappy marriage with a dominant husband pushed her to understand her place as a woman. When she had to endure rest cure it must have been the last straw before she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" to touch upon her thoughts of it.
The rest of her history included in the exhibit was situated after the story was written. She re-married and reunited with her daughter, and she lived a happier life. Her story had paid off for her as well as somewhat in the medical world.
