The Yellow Wallpaper Context: Madness in the late 19th Century

Here's a website that expands more on the nature of asylums in the late 19th Century, and the various mental illnesses that were commonly attributed to women. Note the underlying male paranoia in each diagnosis and how male discourse is aided and abetted by medical opinion.

Some highlights:

“Women during this time were deemed to be highly susceptible to becoming mentally ill as they did not have the mental capacity of men, and this risk grew greatly if the woman attempted to better herself through education or too many activities.“
(Subtext: By diagnosing the female physiology as not only different but inferior to men, society had a justification for trying to limit women’s roles out of the rationale that they could not handle it, and it was for their own good.)

“If a woman of the Victorian era were subject to an outburst (due to discontentment or repression), she would be deemed mad.”
(An effective means of silencing women.)

“These [spinsters and lesbians] were also controlled by the term "frigid" which was used to describe them. Women did not want to be "frigid" and thus married to avoid becoming labeled this manner (Ussher 81).”
(What are the connotations of ‘frigid’? By controlling labels, how does medical-establishment-endorsed patriarchy control women?)

More shocking revelations this way:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/madness.shtml

THE MAUPASSANT NOTES ARE ALREADY HAPPILY UPLOADED ONTO YAHOO GRPS

just so you people haven't checked mail:) please go and check.

cause I uploaded the notes we typed on butcher (?) sheets the last time like for the class. but in any case some of you might already have typed so its alright. but this post is just that you know yeah;) go and steal them, its really good for the "Necklace".

anw loves ya ll. :D
Gillian.
P.S Ms Chin has a nice voice. (:

story of an hour - the film

There's a film adapted from 'Story of an Hour' made by some university students. It's an interesting experiment, and some lines are lifted directly from Chopin's story but some are edited, and some plot details changed as well.

Oh, and it's also in French.



Some things to think about:

1) Mrs. Mallard's reaction to the death in the video is very much different from her reaction in the text. What does this do to her characterisation? Do we lose an integral theme of the story?

2) What is the effect caused by the additional insert of Mrs. Mallard's girlhood flashback? Is it necessary? What effect does the text have in excluding this?

3) Is this ending in the video more effective, or is the text's ending more effective in bringing out the story's themes?

4) Film and text have very different vocabularies, and means of transmitting meaning. How does the film bring out the themes of the story in terms of its choice of images?

Laying Down the Law

Hello girls,

It's been a bit long in coming, but the lit community is finally up and running! Here are just some ground rules:

1) No Trolls: Do not leave anonymous comments, do not be rude, dismissive or patronising. Remember in literature there are no right or wrong answers- just convincing and unconvincing arguments. Debate it out, but always be civil.

2) Since this is the internet, please feel free to exploit it fully! Post youtube videos, links to blogs, online journals or even other works as long as it is relevant to literature and somehow relatable to what we are studying. Do not simply post a link/video, please write a little blurb explaining what it is about and why you wanted to share it.

I will, however, accept a certain amount of off-topic-ness in the comments, but not the posts.

3) Please type with proper grammar! I know that on the internet some of you might tend to TyP3 lYk dIS. But please use proper spelling and grammar. Emoticons, however, like :) or ^___^ are acceptable.

4) Be generous in contributing and sharing. How much we all get out of this community also depends on how much you put into it. It may be an experiment, but we should try our best to help it to succeed. :D

Also, I'm not too fond of this layout. If any of you have stronger opinions about layouts, or find nicer, more appropriate ones, please leave a comment. We should probably have a little blurb describing what this blog is about on the sidebar, so does anyone have any ideas for what we should put as a description? :)

Post away!

(Miss Chin)