What does the story imply about gender roles (men and women) in typical Victorian marriages?

Paper Two: The Yellow Wallpaper
PAPER TWO: TOPICS FOR THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
Due Date: Thursday, April 7th no later than 5:00
Length: Minimum 5-7 pages (no shorter than five pages, no longer than seven), double spaced, MLA format (and Works Cited required on this one)
1. What role does writing play in this story? What is the role of her journal/diary and why does her husband want to prevent her from writing? What does this imply about the power of creativity?
2. What does the story imply about gender roles (men and women) in typical Victorian marriages?
3. What does the story imply about male medicine and female patients during the Victorian era?
4. Discuss Gilman’s use of symbols in the story. What symbols does she employ? How does she use them? What are they meant to represent? How does each connect to her mental state or situation?
5. Trace the narrator’s feelings for her husband through the text. How do her feelings about him change? Why do they change? Look at her language and tone, carefully.
NOTE: If there is a topic you wish to pursue that is not on this list, please okay it with me, first, because I won’t grade papers not on the provided topics unless I have approved it.
Regardless of which topic you choose, the paper is a critical analysis, meaning you need to formulate a thesis statement relevant to your topic, pull examples and quotes from the text that support your case, and fully explain yourself. In addition, this paper will require you to use some outside material. You should find and use material from TWO different sources in this paper, and those critical essays must come from one of the CSI databases. Your research should be very narrowly focused on material you can bring to support what you think. Given the paper is 5-7 pages, no more than two outside sources should be used, since I want to really see you develop your own critical insights.

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