The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

Q. Visit the three databases listed as great places for background information. Give two interesting pieces of information for themes about the stories you are comparing (so a total of four).

“Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

· Interpreted by some authors as a feminist tale; by others as a story of the dangers of modern technology

· Chopin is also the author of The Awakening, about a married woman leaving her husband for her lover

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

· Based on the author’s breakdown after a similar type of rest cure

· Also the author Herland, a feminist utopian story

Q2. In one sentence, explain what are you interested in exploring about the stories. (What is your thesis statement?)

The “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depict how oppression causes emotional stress and psychic disintegration for women in society, which is interpreted as female weakness rather than female frustration.

Q3. Generate a list of keywords or concepts that connect to your thesis statement. (Hint: if you are looking ways in which ideas are connected, use the Mind Map tool in the Credo database.)

Feminism, women’s literature, Chopin, Yellow Wallpaper, patriarchy, suffragettes, women’s movement

Annotated Bibliography

Jamil, Selina S. “Emotions in ‘The Story of an Hour’” Explicator, 67.3 (2009): 215–220.

One of the most striking aspects of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is the compressed narrative structure. Jamil argues that the story makes a case for the importance of emotion and women’s ways of knowing through emotional rather than rational ways. The protagonist Mrs. Mallard suddenly becomes aware of the extent to which she has been living an unlived life, thanks to the intense emotions she experiences after believing her husband has been killed in a railroad accident. The emotions created by belief in his death, first of grief, then of happiness, then of grief again when seeing him apparently restored to life, are more truthful than the supposed rational interpretation of events by outside observers, who believe Mrs. Mallard’s death is caused by joy.

Treichler, Paula A. “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow

Wallpaper.’” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 3. ½ (1984), 61-77. http://sites.middlebury.edu/unquietminds/files/2013/04/Diagnosis-Wallpaper.pdf

This article argues the essential difference between the public language of medical diagnosis and the private nature of journaling. In the 19th century, when “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written, women were commonly diagnosed as hysterics or neurasthenics when they exhibited the symptoms exhibited by the unnamed narrator. This is one reason why she is so careful to keep her reflections privately in a journal, to avoid the public, male gaze of diagnosis which will reduce her symptoms to something that need further treatment. The dangers of male treatment are exhibited throughout the short story, and the woman is shown protecting her observations, including her belief that there is another woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper. Even the other women who attend to her along with her doctor- husband represent the medical, male establishment and are not to be trusted.