The Yellow Wallpaper Questions
Part One
While reading this story, you are to trace the narrator’s deteriorating mind. For each of the categories below, find a minimum of 5 quotations from the story that illustrate the categories.
The Narrator’s loss of control over her thoughts
The narrator’s hallucinations
The narrator’s growing paranoia
The narrator’s obsessions with various ideas/things
Part Two
Answer in 5 or more sentences
Discuss the mansion the couple is staying in.
What is its history?
What is the narrator’s initial feeling about the house?
What does John diagnose his wife with?
What does the narrator say his profession is “perhaps… one reason I do not get well faster”?
What do you think she is really suffering from?
Is her treatment working?
What clue does the narrator’s repeated lament, “What can one do?” give us about her personality?
What conflicting emotions is she having toward her husband, her condition, and the mansion?
How does the narrator initially describe and react to the wallpaper? How does her description of the wallpaper change? (This one will come into play later.)
By the fourth of July, what does the narrator admit about the wallpaper?
What clues does Gilman give about the narrator’s state?
How does the narrator try to reach out to her husband?
Is this her last contact with sanity?
Do you think John has any comprehension of the seriousness of her illness?
Part Three
Thinking about question 4 above, choose one of the following:
In an expository paragraph answer the question: what do you think the wallpaper looks like to her? Why?
THE LINK TO THE STORY:
http://socrates.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/rcunningham/1413-F09/YellowWallpaper.pdf