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Literaturwissenschaft

UCA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2017, Cecilia Kenedy, 6

Johanna O. ©
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Name: María Date: 5/6/17

Assignment on “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Awakening

You must answer 5 questions in all:

You should not resort to information from external sources except for Manfred Jahn’s Narratology or the articles I sent you on Feminism and Psychoanalysis. If you use any of the aforementioned sources you need to cite them.


A) Analyse the following passage from “The Yellow Wallpaper”: (2 quests)

I really have discovered something at last.


Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.


The front pattern does move--and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!


Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.


Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.


And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.


They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!


If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.

Literary Genre: Answer question 1: COMPULSORY

  1. What elements in this passage belong to the Female Gothic genre?

  • The heroine is trapped, enclosed within the room: it is like a cage.

  • The wallpaper: there are women entrapped behind the wallpaper. They try to get out of there and the narrator helps them.

The enclosure is symbolically reflecting the enclosure of American women in the 19th century within societal rules, marriage, motherhood, house-holding. The author is referring between the lines to what was going on in the society in general: women had to respect their husband’s decisions, had to live according to certain societal rules or expectations. It was a patriarchal society in which women didn’t have a voice of their own and they couldn’t do what they wanted.

  • Supernatural: supernatural events are presented, and we may consider them as something real or interpreting them as something behind the message: these events represent the society of that time, how women felt in the American society of the 19th century. The supernatural events are reflected by the woman behind the wallpaper.

Interpretation: Answer 2 or 3:

2)Why would the women get through and then be strangled? Why might anyone be "better off" without a head?

3) Analyse the following quotation: “and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard”.

Who takes hold of the bars? What do the bars stand for? How might this woman mirror the narrator’s situation?

The woman behind the wallpaper is the one who holds the bars. After staring at the paper for hours, the narrator sees a sub-pattern behind the main pattern. Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman looking for an escape from behind the main pattern that stands for the bars of a cage. Both women are interrelated in the sense that both are trapped, enclosed in a cage: the narrator within the room and the woman behind the wallpaper.

B) Analyze the following extract from The Awakening: ( 3 quests)


"How easy it is!" she thought. "It is nothing," she said aloud; "why did I not discover before that it was nothing. Think of the time I have lost splashing about like a baby!" She would not join the groups in their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power, she swam out alone.


She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.


Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not gone any great distance that is, what would have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome.


A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land.


She made no mention of her encounter with death and her flash of terror, except to say to her husband, "I thought I should have perished out there alone."


"You were not so very far, my dear; I was watching you", he told her.


Narratology : Answer question 4 : COMPULSORY

4) Analyse this piece according to the following notions:

a) Stanzel’s narrative situations (first-person, authorial or figural) , b) Genette’s basic types (homodiegetic/heterodiegetic), c) overt/ covert voice distinction, d) focalization, e) style of discourse representation. Justify your answers by defining the variety you consider appropriate.


• It is a figural-authorial narrative situation because we have instances in which it seems to be narrated from the perspective of an internal focalizer (Edna’s point of view), and other instances in which it seems to be narrated through the eyes of a 3rd person narrator, from an outsider who just tells the events as they happen.

• It is a heterodiegetic narrator because the narrator is not a character in the story. He or she is just an outsider, a 3rd person narrator. Although there are some instances in which there is an internal focalizer, he or she remains unnamed, unidentified.

• It is a covert narrator because he/she seems to be hidden, but is there. There is no 1st person pronoun “I”. It is a neutral non-distinctive voice or style. When we have internal focalization, it is hidden because the situation is narrated through the eyes of an internal focalizer, in this case, Edna’s viewpoint.

Internal focalizer: “But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which unaided strength would never be able to overcome. A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses”. It seems as if Edna were telling it to us. It is her point of view, we are wearing her lenses.

External focalizer: “She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlight sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there.

• We also find instances in which the author uses direct discourse. There are tags, dialogue marks (“”), and we know the name of the speaker. “She made no mention of her encounter with death and her flash of terror, except to say to her husband, “I thought I should have perished out there alone.” “You were not so very far, my dear; I was watching you”, he told her.”

  • We find other instances in which free indirect discourse is used. It is focused on the inner life of the character (Edna), reproducing her thoughts, her thinking process, her fantasies and dreams, what is going on inside her mind. It is in 3rd person and you forget that it is the narrator using the 3rd person, it is as if it is Edna speaking. The author, through the narrator, allows the character’s voice or thoughts to take over the narrative voice.

    So, sometimes it seems as if the narrator had disappeared. But the narrator never disappears, the narrator is always there, speaking through the characters. “But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome. A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second time appalled an enfeebled her senses”.

    Here we see how Edna expresses her fears.

Interpretation: Answer either question 5 or 6: You may need to consider the novel as a whole

This passage foreshadows the ending in the sense that Edna was not capable of overcoming the strong waves of the sea, of being strong enough to express herself and be free. The only way out she finds is suicide, giving her life to the sea. She ends up where she began: in the sea. This passage reflects the first time Edna swims and she experiences the feeling of being herself, of being “free”, of swimming away where no woman has ever swum before but the freedom she experiences is not free, because in order to do it she has to leave aside her responsibilities, she has to overcome the barriers the sea (life) presents so she has to be very strong to jump over the barriers and fly away, her wings have to be strong enough to do it to confront traditional expectations and social prejudices.

Answer either question 7 or 8:

For both questions you need to consider the selected passage as well as the novel as a whole.


7) Psychoanalysis: a) Provide a psychoanalytic interpretation for Edna’s relationship (attraction and fascination) with water.

b) Is it at all significant that she compares herself with a baby (in psychoanalytic terms?)

You may refer to other relevant aspects related to psychoanalysis which appear in the passage.


8) Feminism: a)Is Edna’s fate socially and biologically determined?

b) Is she a victim of her social context? Explain why yes/no.


7) In general the sea represents escape and freedom. In this case there is a French connection between the words sea-mother: the French word for sea is mare (pronounced meg) that is homophone with the French word for mother, also pronounced meg. Thus, the sea represents the mother’s womb with its amniotic fluid. Edna feels protected in the sea and feels herself as if she is in in her mother’s womb as well.

The sea also represents the unconscious mind which contains all the fantasies, instincts, unspoken desires, and repressions. In the sea it is also as if Edna felt free, as if she could express herself freely.

Edna resembles a baby who is discovering her own body for the first time. In the sea she discovers herself and she feels more comfortable there without clothes. She is at an infantile stage, in terms of her need to sleep and eat all the time, and of discovering her body. She is looking for fusion or symbiosis with another person (which seems to be the symbiosis the baby has with the mother and she lacked due to her mother’s death).

She lacked the oceanic age, the period in which the baby does not see any difference between his body and the mother’s body.


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