what the Anneka does when her writing does not focus on buttsex
Hey guys! I’m gonna be turning an English essay in on Tuesday (2/21/12), and I figured I might as well post what I have right now here. There’s no obligation, but if anyone wanted to read it and tell me anything they think needs to be changed (or any other sort of comment), I’d really appreciate it. Obviously, thoughts would be most useful before that due date. Also, I apologize in advance for my wall-of-text paragraphs.
I wrote on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (which you really ought to read just because it’s a very well done mindfuck), but as a little bonus I brought in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” (which you really ought to read because HOLY FUCK I LOVE THAT POEM AHHHHH). I wrote a far clumsier and more rushed essay comparing these two a couple years ago, but, well, I figure there’s no harm in expanding on a good idea, right? Plus, different teacher, completely new essay. That’s legit.
I’ll put the guidelines for the essay first, just to show you the sorts of things I’m supposed to be focusing on. Of course, any thoughts are more than welcome, so if you happened to notice something unrelated to these, then please mention it!
Topic
Construct an argumentative literary analysis in which you examine one major theme of one of the short stories we DID NOT discuss in class. In your essay, you will prove your claim (your idea about the author’s theme, ie, “the central theme of ‘A&P’ growth and change”) by showing how the author uses at least FOUR of the following formal aspects of the story to develop that theme: plot, point of view, irony, character, setting, symbolism, tone, and style.
Thesis Statement
The job of a thesis statement is to prepare the reader for your argument: to state explicitly your main claim and to list the main points you will use to prove that claim.
Your thesis statement for this essay should be an IDEA about life or human nature that the story illustrates, and your body paragraphs will persuade us that your idea is correct by explaining how the work of literature makes this point.
Here's a sample thesis:
Updike’s “A&P” is primarily concerned with growing up and becoming responsible, as evidenced by Updike’s use of point of view, character, setting, and irony.
With this thesis map, I've prepared the reader for four body paragraphs, one on point of view, one on character, one on setting, and one on irony, each paragraph supporting my thesis that the theme of “A&P” is growing up and learning responsibility. Both assertion and main points are clearly stated; the reader should expect the paper to follow this same order.
Format
The essay should be three to four pages, typed and double spaced, and include a works cited page. The MLA-style works cited page should include the work of literature you use (no need to use secondary sources for this essay). The essay must include at least four quotations, which must be correctly formatted using MLA-style parenthetical citation for the page numbers.
Audience
Imagine your audience this way: if they’re reading this essay, they must be familiar with the story you have chosen, but they may not have read it recently. That means they need enough background in the introduction to jog their memory, but not a full plot summary. The body paragraphs should focus on particular scenes, conversations, images, etc - NOT summarize the plot point by point.
You may assume that your audience is composed of people familiar with the conventions of short stories and of writing about literature, so you need not define every term you use. As a good interpreter and critic, however, you must clearly discuss your reasoning and supply evidence for any assertion you make: that is, you should not say “Updike uses an unreliable narrator” without showing evidence of this technique and explaining in depth how the unreliable narrator affects the theme. Remember, this paper is not a report - it is an analysis.
Reminders/Checklist:
* Follow MLA parenthetical documentation guidelines for quotations, parenthetical documentation, work cited, font, pagination, spacing, and so on.
* Use correct quotation formats, particularly introduction/integration of quoted material.
* Do not use plot summary--use specific textual details/quotations to support and clarify argumentative points.
* Clearly and fully explain significance of quoted material and other textual details and evidence.
* Use literary present tense.
* Double space everything. [not doing that here, due to post length, but I saw it, don’t worry!]
* Use third person to create a formal, academic voice for your argument.
* Follow conventions and strategies of formal argumentative writing discussed in class, as well as appropriate composition conventions.
* Proofread!
Aaaaand this would be the actual essay. Which, instead of three to four pages, runs nearly six (not counting works cited) when double spaced. So I think I’m okay on length.
Finding Camelot
Feminism and Mental Illness in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Lady of Shalott”
Published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” chronicles the descent into madness of a woman being treated with the ill-conceived rest cure, for what modern readers recognize as post-partum depression. The inspiration for the story, as well as the authority with which it is written, come from the fact that Gilman herself was subjected to the same treatment, also for unrecognized post-partum depression. The well-meaning efforts of her husband and her doctor took a heavy emotional and mental toll on Gilman (though not to the extent that her narrator is affected), and created in her an obvious desire to change the way mental health and women’s health were treated in society at the time. Her use of character, point of view, setting, and symbolism combine to convey the systemic challenges which women faced in the late 1800s, as well as to powerfully show one individual’s descent into madness. Gilman clearly wishes to demonstrate just how harmful her society is to women, and to persuade it to change. In addition, though perhaps unintentionally, throughout her story Gilman creates a parallel to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”, updating the tale of a lady confined to her tower and allowed, lest she fall victim to a curse, only to view the world through a mirror, to create a woman of her own times allowed only to view the world from within a grand home that becomes her prison.
Perhaps due in some part to a desire to keep her plot as simple as possible, in order to leave room for her weighty themes, Gilman’s cast of appearing characters is limited. Several characters-Cousins Henry and Julia, Mother and Nellie, and the narrator’s brother, among others-are mentioned but never appear in the actual narration. Even the narrator’s newborn son, the cause of the post-partum depression for which she is under such damaging treatment, is only mentioned in passing. The three primary characters are Jennie, John, and the narrator. Jennie, John’s sister, is a rather flat character who simply wants to take care of her sister-in-law according to what she believes is a medically sound treatment. John, the narrator’s husband, is a physician, and is a slightly more dynamic character. He is an everyman of the time, a doctor who reflects a prominent theory on women’s mental health. His condescending tone towards his wife seems genuinely born of affection; endearments like “little girl”, rather than seeming intentionally insulting and demeaning towards his wife, convey the prevailing attitudes towards gender roles of society at the time (Gilman 296). He changes slightly by the end of the story, in that he goes from being confident in his treatment and sanctimoniously indulgent towards his wife, to being terrified to the point of passing out at the change in her behavior. The most dynamic character, of course, is the narrator. Her descent into madness is shown clearly through her, for lack of a better word, relationship with the titular wallpaper. When she first arrives, the narrator describes it as “repellent” and says she “never saw a worse paper in [her] life” (Gilman 292). She gradually changes her opinion of the paper as she imagines more and more significance and life in the pattern, going from “irritating” (Gilman 294) to “strange” (Gilman 298), eventually coming to hate the front pattern more and more, and the woman she sees behind it less and less. However, just as the Lady of Shalott only sees the world around her when “moving through a mirror clear / that hangs before her all the year, / shadows of the world appear” (Tennyson li. 46-8), so Gilman’s narrator doesn’t see reality as it truly is when she looks into the wallpaper.
The narrator’s relationship with the wallpaper is important not only because her fixation upon it helps drive her madness, but because the story is told from her point of view. She is an incredibly unreliable narrator, from start to finish. At the beginning of the story, she describes her anger with her husband, who refuses to hear her when she says that she is not ill, as “unreasonable”, and it is up to the reader to read between the lines and see that her anger is, in fact, completely justified (Gilman 291). Her resignation to her place within her society, and the willful self-delusions that go along with it, do go away over the course of the story, but they are replaced by insanity and delusions which serve to make her an even less reliable narrator. She sees herself trapped within the wallpaper, and sees creeping women everywhere. When Jennie, no doubt in complete innocence, places her hand on the wallpaper once, concerned about the smudges it leaves on clothes, the narrator says that she is not fooled: “I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (Gilman 297). In comparing the story with Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”, it is interesting to note that the wallpaper serves to change the narrator’s perspective on herself, as well as the world, much as Tennyson’s Lady can see the world only through a mirror that reflects the view of Camelot outside of her tower window. Just as the Lady becomes “half sick of shadows” (Tennyson li. 71) and turns to look through the window in spite of her curse, so Gilman’s narrator plays a role in relinquishing her own sanity, fixating on the wallpaper and looking to it for meaning in all that happens in her life. Both women have an inability to see the world for themselves, without barriers and lenses.
The setting of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, both in time and in place, tells the reader a great deal about the characters and their motivations. The society of the day had a very limited view of women and their rights and capabilities. Tennyson’s society is more obvious about it, locking the Lady in her tower and never allowing her to see the glory of “many-tower’d Camelot” (Tennyson li. 5) for herself, but Gilman’s narrator is similarly locked away in a society that does not believe in women’s health issues as anything other than frailty and fancies, and in a house which she is not allowed to enjoy-a “hereditary estate” (Gilman 290), echoing the patriarchy which confines her there. The garden, which she notes extensively in her first entry, seems inviting and charming, filled with arbors and benches. However, within that inviting space, there are paths and planting boxes, trellises and greenhouses (“but they are all broken now”), all of which serve to contain and control the natural, wild tendencies of the plants therein (Gilman 291). Perhaps the smashed greenhouses are a foreshadowing of what is to come.
The most important part of the setting, of course, is the room containing the yellow wallpaper of the title. Here again the reader sees the narrator’s willful self-delusion-she sees bars on the windows “for little children” (Gilman 292), rings (clearly for restraints) on the walls, and tooth marks on the bed, and all she sees is a playroom for children. This is also an element of symbolism more subtle than most found within this story, because the society in which she lives views women as more or less children. Effectively, in society’s eyes, it is a playroom for a child. The wallpaper itself is variously described as ugly, intricate, perplexing, and horrendous. Its yellow color is the yellow of sickness, and it leaves an odor she describes as “yellow” upon her wherever she goes, which “used to disturb [her] at first”, but to which she is now accustomed, and of which she eventually seems almost fond (Gilman 298). Within the wallpaper, the narrator sees many patterns. She describes twists and turns, arabesques and vines (again calling to mind the garden outside), but only under the light of the sun, traditionally a very masculine entity. Under the light of the moon, long associated with femininity, she sees bars, trapping the creeping woman within the paper.
This sort of symbolism appears throughout the story. The day, open to society, under the dominant sun, belongs to men. Under the moonlight, the narrator can see the woman who creeps within the wallpaper, “subdued [and] quiet” (Gilman 297) by day, “[shaking] the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 296). As previously mentioned, the broken greenhouses in the garden foreshadow the breaking of the pattern, no longer controlling the plants within any more than the narrator is, in the end, controlled by her husband. However, this freedom comes at a cost-the plants are no longer protected from the elements, and will likely fail to thrive, and the narrator has lost what sanity she had. Just as, once she turns to look out of the window at Sir Lancelot and Camelot, “the curse is come upon” the Lady of Shalott (Tennyson li. 116), so Gilman’s narrator can’t mentally handle the revelation of her own feminine identity and the freedom which she desires-indeed, it can be argued that she never would have had that revelation before crossing the threshold of insanity. The creeping woman, whom the narrator hallucinates in cloud shadows, the garden, and the wallpaper itself, is forced to creep, moving secretively and stealthily, if she wishes to be herself. As the creeping woman is shown more and more to be a hallucinated reflection of the narrator herself (and as the disturbing hints scattered throughout lead to the revelation that the narrator is far from the first woman to go mad within this house), her creeping becomes an act of defiance. The greenhouse is smashed, and the wallpaper ripped off of the wall. The Lady no longer needs her mirror, as she turns to look at Camelot. These women are doomed by the societies in which they live, but they have a moment of independence in spite of that. However, neither society will truly understand what has happened. When the boat carrying the Lady of Shalott’s corpse drifts to a stop by Camelot, the reaction is hardly one of understanding. Rather, immediately “died the sound of royal cheer; / and they crossed themselves for fear, / all the knights at Camelot” (Tennyson li. 165-7). That there is something to be pitied in the Lady is recognized only through Sir Lancelot, who, though the reader is aware of the complexity of her story, looks upon her body and merely remarks, “she has a lovely face; / God in his mercy lend her grace, / The Lady of Shalott” (Tennyson li. 169-71). Meanwhile, Gilman’s narrator will doubtless be diagnosed as completely mad (which she is by this point), without anyone understanding the gender inequality and mistreatment of mental illness that led her to be so, or her own personal revelations regarding her female identity.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman clearly wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in order to convey the damage being done to women in her society, and in order to change their situation. It is encouraging, then, to note that the very doctor who subjected her to the rest cure years before the story was written read “The Yellow Wallpaper” and was convinced to change the way he treated his patients as a result. The changing understanding of women’s health and mental health continues to this day, with first-hand accounts such as the one which Gilman fictionalized carrying tremendous power to change society’s understanding of the treatment of the mentally ill. Gender equality, clearly an issue since long before Tennyson’s time, has continued to evolve through Gilman’s time and into the present day. Society is still far from ideal, but it certainly seems much closer to the Camelot for which both Gilman and the Lady so longed.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing: Fifth Edition. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 290-301. Print.
Tennyson, Alfred. “The Lady of Shalott.” 1842. sfsu.edu. San Fransisco State University, n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.