Welcome Back!

1. Welcome Back! Look for your Quarter 3 passes, this will be your new assigned seat.

2. Semester 2 We will discuss the purpose of the Q3 passes. We will go over the Q3-4 syllabus. Students will sign the BYOD Agreement form.

3. Objective • Students will identify the point of view of The Yellow Wallpaper by reading and writing the definition of Unreliable Narrator.

4. Bellwork - Day 1: • “The Yellow Wallpaper” - 5 minute-prompt • “Have you ever had a person in your life that exaggerated facts and details?” • “What kind of things did they embellish or misremember?”

6. VocabularyLiterary Terminology • First-person Point of View:

7. Literary Terminology • First-person Point of View: • When a character in the story is also telling the story from his or her own perspective.

8. Literary Terminology • First-person Point of View: • When a character in the story is also telling it. • The narrator’s experience shapes the experience of the reader.

9. Literary Terminology • Unreliable Narrator: 1. What is a synonym for unreliable: 2. What is a synonym for a narrator:

10. Literary Terminology • Unreliable Narrator: • A narrator that is not trustworthy.

11. Literary Terminology • Unreliable Narrator: • A narrator that is not trustworthy. • A narrator might not be reliable for a variety of reasons (Ex. mental illness, dishonest personality).

12. Literary Terminology • Unreliable Narrator: • A narrator that is not trustworthy. • A narrator might not be reliable for a variety of reasons (Ex. mental illness, dishonest personality). • This narrator’s rendition of events must be taken into consideration before you believe what they say.

13. Famous examples • Unreliable Narrator

14. Famous examples • Unreliable Narrator • Narrator commits a murder and believes that he hears his victim’s still-beating heart beneath the floor boards.

15. Famous examples • Unreliable Narrator • Narrator suffers from “dissociative-personality disorder” (split-personalities). • The unnamed narrator is both the story’s protagonist and antagonist. without realizing it!

16. The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman • In 1887, suffered from "a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending toward melancholia -- and beyond." • She prescribed the "Rest Cure” and advised against more than two hours of intellectual stimulation a day. She was ordered to cease writing, drawing, and painting for the remainder of her life.

17. The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman • Gilman eventually went against the orders of her doctors and resumed writing. • In 1892, Gilman’s narrative “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published. It was based on her experience with the “Rest Cure”.

18. Post-Partum Depression • Post-partum depression is severe depression in a woman after she has given birth. • Post-partum depression is a more serious condition that affects between 8 - 20% of women after pregnancy, especially the first 4 weeks.

19. Post-Partum Depression • Symptoms    • Negative feelings toward the baby • Lack of pleasure in all or most activities • Feeling withdrawn, socially isolated, or unconnected • Agitation and irritability • Trouble sleeping • Difficulty concentrating or thinking

20. Objective Students will do a close reading of a short essay that Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote on why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.

21. Many and many a reader has asked me that. When the story first came out, in the  New England Magazine  about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in  The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it. Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and -- begging my pardon -- had I been there? Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia -- and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest-cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887.

22. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over. Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again -- work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite -- ultimately recovering some measure of power. Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.

23. The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate -- so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered. But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading "The Yellow Wallpaper." It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked. SOURCE:  The Forerunner, October 1913.

24. Objective • Students will discuss the effects of Post Partum depression and how it contributes to the theme of Unreliable Narrator.

25. Bellwork • When you are stressed or need something to clear your mind, what do you do to relax?

26. Bellwork • Complete questions for the third and fourth read of the “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?”

27. 1. Describe the basic situation that the narrator finds herself in at the beginning of the story.

28. She is sick and is told to stay in a nursery/bedroom until she is well. The room she is in is covered in ugly, yellow wallpaper.

29. 2. Discuss John’s attitude and behavior toward his wife, especially in terms of her illness. In the course of thinking about this issue, consider the symbolism of the “nursery.”

30. He treats her as a child. The nursery is symbolic of these feelings because he not only acts as if she is incapable of taking care of herself, but he physically places her in a room for children.

31. 3. Identify some of the ways in which the conflict between the narrator and her husband are established.

32. Every time the narrator has to hide her journal and put it in a place where her husband won’t see it, the conflict grows. It demonstrates that she cannot trust her husband with what she is doing, and she does not agree with his methods of medicine. Also, each time the husband, John, speaks to his wife as a child, it shows that he does not take her seriously.

33. 4. Discuss the general nature of the narrator’s feelings toward her husband.

34. She generally trusts him and listens to him, but as the story progresses she becomes more and more untrusting and eventually rebels against him completely.

35. 5. Do you think John is trying to drive his wife crazy?

36. No, John is doing what he can to heal is wife. However, his methods cause her to unintentionally become worse.

37. 6. What clues can you point to that suggest that the woman in the story is not an entirely “reliable” narrator? Is there any irony to this fact?

38. Possible answers: She begins to see things that are not real. She believes there is a figure in the wallpaper, and she eventually believes that she IS the woman in the wallpaper. In the end the reader learns she is completely unreliable when she is scratching and tearing at the wallpaper and creeping around the room.

39. Objective • Students will cite textual evidence to show foreshadowing and identify the plot twist in The Yellow Wallpaper.

40. Bellwork • Cite 3 examples in the story that show the narrator has symptoms of Post Partum Depression.

41. Formative- • The Unreliable Narrator’s name is? • Mary b. Jenny c. Julia d. None of the above • The narrator is suffering from? • Post-traumatic depression b. Split personality c. Post partum depression d. None of the above • John is… • A doctor b. The narrator’s brother c. the narrator’s wife • d. A and C • The narrator sees… • a. Ghosts b. Illusions c. Eyes d. A woman

42. 7. Consider the multiple functions that the wallpaper plays in the story. Also, does the wallpaper stay the same throughout the story, or does it change?

43. The wallpaper shows the mental changes within the narrator, and it also functions as an antagonist. It changes as the story progresses, thus making clear the insanity of the narrator.

44. 8. Who is the figure in the wallpaper?

45. At first the figure is simply a woman behind bars. Later, it becomes the narrator.

46. 9. What is the principal social institution against which the narrator of the story struggles?

47. She struggles against the practice of medicine at the time. She is against locking up the ill and not letting patients do creative or outdoor activities.

48. 10. In what ways might the ending of the story be seen as both a victory and a defeat for the narrator? In what ways is her situation both similar to and different from that of the creeping woman in the wallpaper?

49. It is a victory because the narrator proves that she was right and her husband was wrong in how to treat her illness; however, it is also a defeat because she completely loses her sanity and is no longer who she or her husband wants her to be.

50. “The yellow wallpaper”Day 2: “Crazy gauge” • During today’s reading, student’s will record events that suggest the narrator’s declining condition.