I denne study guide kan du få hjælp til at analysere novellen "The Yellow Wallpaper" af Charlotte Perkins Gilman, som findes i ekstramaterialet til antologien Wider Contexts. Udover analysehjælpen kan du finde et summary af teksten, samt inspiration til fortolkning og perspektivering.
Præsentation af teksten
Titel: “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1899)
Forfatter: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Genre: Short story
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) var en amerikansk forfatter, som både skrev skønlitteratur og sagprosa. Hun var en af de vigtigste feministiske teoretikere og forfattere i sin samtid, men hendes arbejde mødte også meget kritik.
Et af hendes mest betydningsfulde værker er bogen Women and Economics (1898), hvor hun argumenterer for, at kvinder bør have ret til at arbejde.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" er Gilmans mest kendte novelle, og den inkluderer delvist selvbiografiske elementer, da Gilman også var igennem en depression. Gilman har selv udtalt, at novellen var tænkt som en kritik af den dårlige rådgivning, som sundhedssystemet gav hende i forbindelse med hendes lidelse.
Uddrag
Nedenfor kan du læse et kort uddrag fra vores study guide til teksten:
Title
The title of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a reference to an element of the setting which is the dominant symbol in the story. The narrator and her husband rent an old mansion for the summer and they sleep in a former nursery with yellow wallpaper.
At first, narrator is shocked by the ugliness of the wallpaper and by the negative emotions it stirs in her:
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. (p. 5, ll. 15-24)
However, as time passes and having nothing to do, the narrator starts obsessing over the wallpaper, finding it intriguing and unable to follow the pattern:
There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, – the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction. (p. 9, ll. 11-15)
