By the end of the 1800s, feminists were gaining momentum in favor of change. By the middle of the century, this way of thinking began to change as the seeds of early women's rights were planted. Men, on the other hand, would rule the public domain through work, politics, and economics. Such 'separate spheres' ideals suggested that a woman's place was in the private domain of the home, where she should carry out her prescribed roles of wife and mother. In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, 'domestic ideology' positioned American middle class women as the spiritual and moral leaders of their home. Guiding QuestionsĬharlotte Perkins Gilman's story 'The Yellow Wall-paper' was written during a time of great change. This lesson is also suitable as a stand-alone lesson plan focusing on a close reading of Gilman's story, exploring such literary concepts as setting, narrative style, symbol, and characterization. This lesson requires a close reading of 'The Yellow Wall-paper' itself within the context of students' research and analysis in the first part of the full lesson. This lesson plan, the second part of a two-part lesson, should be completed after students examine and understand the historical, social, cultural, and economic context of Gilman's story in Lesson One. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 'Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall-paper,' 1913 This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded that there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as possible,' to 'have but two hours' intelligent life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.' This was in 1887…' 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. 'For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia-and beyond.

Gilman the yellow wallpaper