What does the woman behind the wallpaper represent? Why does the narrator come to identify with her?
What will be an ideal response?
- The narrator identifies with the woman in the wall because they are in the same situation. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses the traditional figure of the doppelgänger (a German term that, translated literally, means “double-goer”) in an original, feminist way. In Romantic literature the double usually represented an evil self that had broken free of the dominant, moral, conscious self. The evil double often battles the “real” self for control of the person’s life. In Gilman’s story, the repressed self that is finally liberated also wants to take over the narrator’s life, but the double is neither obviously evil nor morally dangerous. Once free, the double seems to merge into the narrator. “I wonder if they all come out of the wallpaper as I did?” she suddenly comments. Although the narrator’s outer life is crumbling, she is achieving a new authenticity in her inner life. Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic doppelgänger story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was published with immense acclaim in 1886—only four years before Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” One wonders if Gilman knew it. She seems to take Stevenson’s conventional moral themes and revise them radically from a feminist perspective.
Language Arts & World Languages
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Tú __________________________________________________________________
Language Arts & World Languages
VOCABULARIO. Información sobre la ciudad. Escribe el año que escuchas en cada oración.
1. __________ 2. __________ 3. __________ 4. __________ 5. __________
Language Arts & World Languages
How old was Maliszewski’s grandmother when her grandfather died?
a) 70 years old b) years old c) 35 years old d) 62 years old
Language Arts & World Languages
Eine Frau, die mündlich übersetzt, ist
Anwältin Arzt Ärztin Automechaniker Bibliothekarin Dolmetscherin Informatiker Informatikerin Künstler Musikerin Rechtsanwalt Schauspieler Zahnarzt
Language Arts & World Languages