Name: _____________________ Hour: _______

“The Yellow Wallpaper”

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Directions:

1. Take notes on the author’s background including writing styles

2. While reading the short story answer the questions below in complete

sentences.

3. Explain how the quotes are significant to the short story - Be specific

Part 1 - Author/Text background notes:

Part 2 - Reading questions:

1. What is important about the title, The Yellow Wallpaper?

2. Could the wallpaper have been any other color? How would a change in color have

changed the story? What are the psychological implications of the color "yellow"? How

would a different color change the story?

3. How does the narrator's description of the wallpaper change over time? How is the

wallpaper representative of the domestic sphere?

AP Lit 2017/18 Hadous

4. Could the story have taken place in a different place (or at a different time)? Why

does the narrator live in a "colonial mansion"? What does the setting mean? Is it important?

5. Why does Charlotte Perkins Gilman change the point of view? Is it an effective

technique?

6. Why does the narrator say: "what can one do?"? How does that statement represent

her state of mind?

7. Why do you think Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?

8. What are the conflicts in The Yellow Wallpaper? What types of conflict (physical,

moral, intellectual, or emotional) did you notice? Is the conflict resolved?

9. How does Charlotte Perkins Gilman reveal characters in The Yellow Wallpaper?

Do you care about the characters? Do you like (or dislike) them? How real (or

well-developed) do they seem to you?

AP Lit 2017/18 Hadous

10. What are some themes in The Yellow Wallpaper? Symbols? How do they relate to

the plot and characters?

11. Does The Yellow Wallpaper end the way you expected? Did you expect a longer (or

more involved narrative)? How? Why?

12. What is the central/primary purpose of The Yellow Wallpaper? Is the purpose

important or meaningful?

13. What is the role of women in the text? How are mothers represented? What about

single/independent women? What is important about women--in the historical

context?

14. How does the narrator's relationship with her husband evolve/change? Does her

mental state improve or worsen?

AP Lit 2017/18 Hadous

Part 3 - Quotes Analysis:

1. "The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded

by the slow-turning sunlight."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

2. "This wallpaper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating

one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

3. "I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the

wallpaper."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

4. "There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

5. "You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down,

and tramples upon you."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

6. "For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of

yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long

smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

AP Lit 2017/18 Hadous